Theorycrafting Think Tank – Fury Warrior Compendium
Disclaimer: This article is strictly the experienced opinion(s) and knowledge of its author(s) and collective information from the theorycrafting community. It should not be regarded as current purist fact, rather portray the best possible collective information. The models in this article are designed to most accurately estimate as possible the behavior of the game’s mechanics on average, and will not purely define most, random, unfortunate, and/or player-inconsistent anomalies that arise from what actually happens in the game world.
This is a very in-depth guide but the read level is multi-faceted. Beginners and advanced players will all get something out of it.
Topics Outline
[top]Quick Reference
| Cap Ratings | Hit Table | Stat Conversions |
|---|---|---|
| Cap Percent Rating Dodge6.50%214 (26)Special Hit5.00%164Penetration100%1400 | Base Boss Hit Table Percent Chance Crit Conversion-4.8%Dodge6.5%Parry14%, or difficulty tunedSpecial Miss8%Dual Wield Miss27%Glance24% | Stat rating per 1% AGI62.500Crit45.906Hit32.790Haste32.790ArP13.996ExP32.790 |
| Armor Values and Damage Scaling |
| Debuffs Boss Armor DAw/0%ArP ArPEff.Cap Armw/100%ArP DAw/100%ArP none1064358.87%8625.172017.8388.30%5SA8414.464.42%7915.63498.7796.83%5SA, FF8088.6865.32%7773.73314.9597.97%5SA, FF, shatter6470.9470.18%6470.940100% |
[top]Talent Spec Variation
It is important to go over varying spec builds because there is quite a bit of flexibility in the level 80 Fury build than what meets the eye. It is generally accepted that a Fury Warrior exists for his high potential personal DPS first and foremost, and that this potential is unlocked by a healthy spectrum of scaling talents. Fury Warriors also perform substantially when faced with encounters where there is incoming damage and adds to whirlwind, cleave, or face-tank. It is also important to note that there are a few group utility talents specific to the Warrior which may aid your raid at the cost of a few minor DPS-increasing talents.
[top]18/51+3 The summary of the scaling DPS talents
There is a general consensus of what key talents to choose to be able to maximize your effectiveness as a DPS role. A general example of this build can be shown here. The power of this spec comes from the great amount of passive talents that allows the Warrior to utilize his already powerful abilities.
[top]Improved Heroic Strike
Improved Heroic Strike increases the frequency in which you can turn your main hand white attacks into more powerful, yellow ones that use the special attack hit table. The goal of this talent is to help you reach near 100% heroic strike frequency faster. There may be a point in gear level where you can have near 100% frequency without this talent, when which you can spend the points somewhere else if you so choose, but it’s still not really recommended. Reaching a 100% heroic strike frequency on the main hand is very desirable but difficult to achieve due to the pitfalls of possible avoidance streaks denying you the rage in certain moments to keep that value. This can somewhat help with that, but at high gear levels the -3 rage may not seem significant to help that issue. This talent also makes your rage consumption easier to manage when you do use Heroic Strike as you are sacrificing less rage to utilize them, giving you more play room in your rage management and overall DPS rotation. Works well with [Glyph of Heroic Strike].
abbr. IHS
[top]Impale
Impale makes your special (yellow) critical strikes hit harder. It increases the bonus damage by 20% in the form 100%+20%. This means that these critical strikes will do 100%+100%+20%=220% damage instead of 200% damage normally. We will speak of crit bonus damage a few more times, so it is important to understand how to apply crit bonus damage. Normal damage is always static and bonus damage goes up or down based on how talents or other things affect it. Here’s a picture.
Impale also has repercussions on the effect of a [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] or [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]. When a special (yellow) critical strike occurs, the 3% bonus of the meta gem is applied first, taking into account the 200% critical strike damage. This results in the strike causing 206% damage. The damage of a non-critical strike is then subtracted from this in order to determine the crit bonus damage portion of the strike which is 106%. This portion of the damage is then multiplied by the 20% bonus from Impale, resulting in 127.2% crit bonus damage, summing to 227.2% normal damage on the impaled special critical strike.
[top]Deep Wounds
Deep wounds applies physical DOT damage to the victims of your critical strikes. 3/3 Deep wounds will apply 48% of your weapon damage over 6 seconds to your victim. The weapon damage used is the weapon damage listed in your character sheet at the time that you landed your critical. Crits landed on the off hand use the off hand damage range, not the main hand damage range. You can think of it as additional critical bonus damage that is applied in its own form. Blizzard developers have discussed the power of these three talent points as being too powerful and may look into changing it or scaling it down, however they are concerned with its use with non-TG-Fury builds as they do not want to hurt them. There is much uncertainty regarding deep wounds and server-client interaction regarding its exact damage and how it is applied. It is believed that there may be some loss involved in this server-client interaction and there are certain tests to back up that loss. How exactly this works is being examined, however there is a fundamental mechanic that can be understood. How exactly the damage is dealt and theories behind potential losses are discussed in section 6.4.
abbr. DWounds
[top]Two-Handed Specialization
Two-Handed Specialization creates a multiplier for all of your Warrior abilities and skills when you are using two handed weapons. 3/3 gets you an overall damage multiplier of 1.06. For example, if you did 100 damage with an ability without this talent, you would do 106 damage with. This mechanic is classed with Damage Increasing Multipliers (DIMs) which are discussed multiple times in this compendium.
abbr. 2H Spec
[top]Armored to the Teeth
3/3 Armored to the Teeth gives you 3 attack power for every 108 armor you have. A DPS warrior with 12000 Armor would get 333 base attack power with this talent. This amount naturally increases with gear level, because the armor level on items generally goes up. The attack power gained from AttT is recalculated cyclically every 30 seconds, so if you change a piece of armor or receive a positive or negative armor modifier such as Berserking or Mark of the Wild, your corresponding attack power from AttT will not change right away and must wait until the 30 second check arrives.
abbr. AttT
[top]Cruelty
5/5 Cruelty increases your chance to land a critical strike with all physical attacks by 5%.
[top]Dual Wield Specialization
Dual Wield Specialization increases the damage you deal with your off-hand weapon by 25%. This is a multiplier similar to Two-Hand Specialization. 5/5 gets your offhand damage multiplier up to 50%*1.25=62.5%.
[top]Precision
Precision decreases your chance to miss with all abilities. 3/3 Precision reduces your chance to miss by 3%.
[top]Death Wish
Death Wish is a major DPS cooldown that increases all the damage you deal by 20% while it is active. It has a 30 second duration with a 3 minute base cooldown. The cooldown can be reduced with the Intensify Rage talent. Deathwish’s buff acts as a DIM. That is, you take your original damage without Death Wish and then multiply it by 120% or 1.2 to get your damage done with Death Wish active. While it is active, you also take 5% more damage.
[top]Flurry
Flurry increases the attack speed of your next 3 weapon swings for 12 seconds after dealing a critical strike with a physical attack. 5/5 Flurry grants you a 25% increase. This increase acts as a multiplier in the form of 125% or 1.25. Flurry is an aura buff that is applied to your character after you have landed that critical strike, and it goes away when 3 swung attacks are attempted or 12 seconds has expired. You can think of the Flurry buff increasing your attack speed in this way while existing in the attack speed multiplier family:
In a sense, Flurry increases the total white attacks you make by 25% while it is up, and is the staple of what defines you as a Fury Warrior since day 1. Flurry’s mechanics and uptime formula will be described more in depth in section 6.8.
[top]Intensify Rage
This talent decreases the cooldowns of your Recklessness, Death Wish, and Berserker Rage. 3/3 of this talent will reduce the cooldowns of each by 33%. Differing cooldown levels per talent point are shown in the following table:
| Talent Points | Deathwish | Recklessness | Berserker Rage | Bloodrage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 03:00 | 05:00 | 00:30 | 01:00 |
| 1 | 02:40 | 04:27 | 00:27 | 00:53 |
| 2 | 02:20 | 03:54 | 00:23 | 00:47 |
| 3 | 02:01 | 03:21 | 00:20 | 00:40 |
[top]Bloodthirst
Bloodthirst deals 50% of current attack as damage and has a 4 second cooldown. It also places a buff on you that heals you for 1% of your maximum health the next 3 times you land a physical attack for 8 seconds. This effect can be increased with [Glyph of Bloodthirst] to yield a massive 2% health gain per hit. Depending on gear level, this healing can single handedly keep your downtime minimal while farming or grinding mobs and lengthen your lifespan when not receiving heals. This passive healing is somewhat useful in PvP scenarios and can be used to keep you alive when soloing old raid instances using the Hybrid Fury/Prot build. Discussion of the skill’s damage spread can be found in section 6.3.
abbr. BT
[top]Improved Whirlwind
Improved Whirlwind increases the damage done by your Whirlwind ability. 2/2 Points into this talent increases its damage by 20%. This is a DIM for Whirlwind.
abbr. ImpWW
[top]Bloodsurge
Every time you connect with your Bloodthirst, main hand Whirlwind, or Heroic Strike abilities, you will get a chance to get a buff lasting 5 seconds which will make your next Slam instant. 3/3 points into this talent will give you a 20% chance to use a „Bloodsurge Slam“ off of those ability connects. While using two-handed weapons, these Slams hit particularly hard. One must become skilled in knowing when to use your Bloodsurge Slam so that its use does not negatively interfere with other abilities in the DPS cycle and that it is used within its 5 second expiry. The effectiveness of correct use of Bloodsurge Slams is not very closed-form and may be difficult to grasp. Details on how to use this talent effectively in your DPS rotation is discussed in greater detail in section 3.3.
[top]Improved Berserker Stance
Improved Berserker Stance increases your total strength by 4% per point and reduces your threat by 2% per point. 5/5 into this talent gives you 20% additional strength, and reduces your threat by 10%. In Berserker Stance you are already only doing 80% of your base threat due to its natural threat reduction. Full points into this talent will make you do only 72% base threat in the native DPS stance. Along with Flurry, this has always been a defining talent specific to Fury Warriors.
abbr. IBS
[top]Unending Fury
Unending Fury increases the damage you deal with Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, and Slam. 5/5 points into this talent increases the damage of these abilities by 10%. This is a DIM for those abilities.
[top]Titan’s Grip
Titan’s Grip allows the player to hold a two-handed weapon in one hand. This can be used to dual-wield two-handed weapons as well as use one in conjunction with a shield or one-handed weapon. Due to the powerful nature of the talent, there is also 10% damage penalty on all of your damage when you have a two-handed weapon in one hand. This is also the same as a Damage Increasing Multiplier (DIM) of 0.9 which is a factor multiplied on all of your damage.
abbr. TG
[top]Optional and/or Switchable Talents
There will always be that one true DPS spec, where it is the most effective when all that is concerned is personal DPS. However, There are a few talents that are used as fillers that have little DPS worth or serve functions other than DPS. With a little tweaking one can afford to rearrange these few talent points losing very little DPS viability, to gain other or more well-rounded benefits. These benefits include better assisting your raid group, freedom of movement, or a little extra utility. Also, points can be moved to achieve certain PvP gains to develop a more well-rounded warrior that is ready to take on more hectic scenarios.
[top]Rampage
With Rampage, you grant yourself and raid members within 100 yards of you 5% increased critical chance to ranged and melee attacks (not caster spells). Some say that this talent is not needed if there is a Feral Druid always in your raids, however this talent is a must have if you ever do anything without a Feral Druid because the gain is so great for only 1 talent point. If all you do is raid and nothing else and you really want that extra talent point, then feel free to drop Rampage. The Feral Druid Leader of the Pack grants the same effect, but also has an improved version that returns health and mana to raid members that land a melee or ranged critical attack. Improved Leader of the Pack is more beneficial in this sense, and it with Rampage does not stack.
[top]Commanding Presence
5/5 Commanding Presence increases the potency of your Battle and Commanding Shouts by 25%. For example, if your Battle Shout granted 550 additional base attack power without the talent, it would give 550*1.25=687.5 base attack power with the full 5 points for a difference of 137.5 base attack power. This talent is very useful when in a raid or party because it scales your optional raid buffs which are desirable for most classes in that raid or party. A maximized Battle Shout however is completely replaceable by a 2/2 Improved Might from a Paladin, which lasts a much longer 30 minutes. The health bonus from maximized Commanding Shout however is unmatched.
[top]Improved Execute
Improved Execute reduces the cost of your execute by 2 with one talent point and by 5 with two talent points. The benefit to this is that it allows you to hit Execute in very low rage situations (10 rage instead of 15) and gives you extra rage per Execute in high rage situations. Execute deals 38 damage per extra point of rage over cost. Keep in mind that you can only Execute less than 20% of the fight duration and that Execute is only part of that less than 20% rotation. Due to it’s place in the tree, however, it’s DPS talent substitutes aren’t much better or comparable. If you want a pure DPS build, it’s probably worth it to pick up one or two points here. The effect can also be improved further with [Item not found!].
[top]Improved Rend
Improved Rend 2/2 increases the damage you deal with Rend by 20%. Believe it or not, it is possible for an experienced player to squeeze out additional DPS by switching to Arms Stance, stopping Heroic Strike, and rending when a GCD would otherwise be unused and return to Berserker Stance quickly. This talent gives a DIM effect and scales very well with other modifiers such as Mangle/Trauma (30%) or when the target is greater than 75% health (35%) for a total of 110.6% extra Rend damage. Rend can tick two additional times also with [Glyph of Rending]. More info on Rend use can be seen in section 3.6.
[top]Heroic Fury
Heroic Fury removes all roots and refreshes your intercept cooldown and has a 45 second cooldown. This talent is extremely useful where a good amount of movement between targets is necessary or there is a rooting/slowing mechanic to a fight. Heroic Fury is an excellent talent for grinding mobs. Using this in combination with charge and intercept allows you to seamlessly travel between mobs after you slaughter them mercilessly. If you are serious about standing up to other classes PvP, then it it also recommended to get this talent as some players still don’t expect it’s effect. There are also may be some encounters where you will be rooted in place. A specific example is Hodir in Ulduar. Heroic Fury will increase your presence on the boss in absence of being stuck in a root.
[top]Anger Management
Anger Management gives you 1 rage ever 3 seconds. This translates into an additional rage every 3 seconds while in combat and only losing 2 rage every 3 seconds compared to 3 while not in combat. If you get this talent, it could turn a frustrating situation where by chance you only have 24 rage and cannot hit your Whirlwind, to a situation where you get that last point to click over to 25 and are able to keep your rotation. Theoretically, this talent will not benefit you in a raid situation if you have enough rage income to fuel 100% heroic strike frequency and you practice proper rage management. If you have less than 100% heroic strike frequency, the average theoretical DPS gain of this talent is very small.
[top]Booming Voice
Booming voice increases the radius and duration of Commanding Shout and Battle Shout. 2/2 points into this talent increases these effects by 50%, giving these shouts a 45 yard range and a 3 minute duration. It is possible to also increase the duration of Battle or Commanding Shout further using [Glyph of Battle] or [Glyph of Command]totaling up to 6 minutes. If there is no Paladin with Improved Might in your raid, then it is generally your job to keep up Battle Shout 100% of the time on all targets that can benefit. This talent is extremely helpful in fulfilling that role especially if you have not found proper interface tools to help you track its remaining duration. Also if you are in charge of Commanding Shout, then it will also apply the buff to more of your long distance raid members for a longer duration.
[top]Improved Cleave
For level 80, the bonus damage on Cleave is 222. 3/3 into Improved Cleave gives the bonus a 120% modifier, and increases the BONUS DAMAGE ONLY to (1+1.2)*222=488.4. That’s an increase of 266.4 damage. Now, take into account that when you Cleave, you are hitting two or more targets (three if you are using [Item not found!]) so the increase of this talent is proportional to the amount of targets hit with the Cleave. Having 3/3 Improved Cleave however does not out-damage the bonus from Heroic Strike, which is 495. Cleave also cannot proc Bloodsurge. This talent combined with [Item not found!] performs very well on stacked trash scenarios, stacked multi-mob boss encounters, and general multi-mob farming. It is only advised to specialize Cleave in a raid if the opportunity arises itself where you would do more damage than not using Heroic Strike and increased Slam amounts or putting the talents somewhere else.
[top]Enrage
Points into Enrage will give you a chance to „pop“ a damage increasing modifier (DIM) when taking direct or some event damage. 5/5 points into this talent give you a 10% damage modifier. The chance to trigger is 30% and lasts for 12 seconds at each talent level. Enrage does not stack with Death Wish. It is very debatable if this talent is even worth putting points into for damage dealing purposes in a raid setting because there aren’t very many situations where it is normal to get hit with damage that can pop this effect. Direct melee or spell hits definitely can trigger this effect, however other sources of damage must be tested. It is very viable to spec into Enrage for purposes of soloing or times where you are being directly damaged quite often.
[top]Unbridled Wrath
Unbridled Wrath grants a chance to gain 1 rage on a landed on-swing attack. Each point gives you a 3PPM chance for regular swings only to gain this 1 rage. If you did not care too much about Booming Voice, you could put those 2 points into here. This gives you a 6PPM chance on swings for 1 rage on-swing, per each main and offhand weapon. Again, the average theoretical DPS value of this talent is small and can be compared to Anger Management and Improved Berserker Rage. PPM effects are discussed in section 7.9.1.
abbr. UW
[top]Imp Berserker Rage
1 and 2 points into this talent will give you 10 and 20 rage respectively each time you use Berserker Rage. This translates to additional rage income to fuel more Heroic Strikes if you don’t already have 100% heroic strike frequency. Full speccing into this talent will effectively give you 20 rage per 20 seconds (in conjunction with 3/3 Intensify Rage) if you used it every time it was up, however you will not be able to do so because it will interfere with your rotation. The average theoretical DPS gain is small, and it is possible that in combination with latency one could be hindering their optimal DPS by the overlapping of global cooldowns. This talent can help in times where rage budget and spending are very tight with lower gear levels. It is not recommended to choose this talent at mid to high range gear levels due to the importance of having free global cooldowns for possible Slam! procs and due to sufficient rage incomes.
abbr. IBR
[top]Piercing Howl
Piercing Howl is a great talent for situational uses. It functions as a short AoE slow which is very ideal for situations where kiting is needed. Piercing Howl causes no threat. Speccing into this would need a free talent point, taken out of either Commanding Presence, Improved Execute, or Improved Cleave.
abbr. PH
[top]Imp Demoralizing Shout
Improved Demoralizing Shout increases the effect of your Demoralizing Shout. 5/5 into this talent increases its effect by 40%, netting 140% of its normal value. It is entirely possible to have 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points into this talent, while still having a maximum DPS build. This requires dropping other fluff talents. An example of this build can be seen here. It is known that mobs and bosses do have a limited amount of attack power that increases their melee damage. In WotLK at level 80 raiding, this data was determined by Deckard from TankSpot using a Hunter’s Beast Lore to find differing damage ranges per point of Imp Demo Shout on Maexxna in Naxxramas. The following test results can be seen in the following table:
| TP | -AP | Damage range | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0/5 | 411.00 | 17169-24450 | |
| 1/5 | 443.88 | 16978-24259 | -191 |
| 2/5 | 476.76 | 16787-24068 | -191 |
| 3/5 | 509.64 | 16596-23877 | -191 |
| 4/5 | 542.52 | 16405-23686 | -191 |
| 5/5 | 575.40 | 16220-23501 | -185 |
As you can see, every point is fully used until the last point, in which the target’s AP value hits zero and the damage range difference is a little less than previous reductions. This means that the fifth talent point is 97% utilized. Taking full use of this talent may be a good idea in more difficult progression raid encounters where the tank needs as much physical mitigation as possible to increase the success chance of the raid. This debuff is shared with Vindication from a Ret Paladin and Improved Demoralizing Roar from a Feral Druid.
[top]Finding the Optimal Rotation
A good portion of a Fury Warrior’s DPS is automatic, however part comes from effective use of his damage abilities, which in turn can tighten the other portions of automatic DPS via procs and on strike talent activations. The basis of an optimal rotation consists of using Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, and Bloodsurge Slams with the least amount of GCD overlaps relative to the overall strengths of the strikes and minimizing Bloodsurge expirations. This can be a very complex problem as there are many opportunities for overlapping with the randomness of the availability of a Bloodsurge Slam, the generally free GCD restrictive 8s BT-WW-BT smallest period, and the lag or skill of the player.
There are a few adaptations to this rotation basis that can optimize your performance further depending on the situation. The four major situations include: If rage is being consumed by using Cleave, if sundering armor is required by the player, if only personal single target damage is required, or finally if the player is using Rend. Also, the tier 10 armor set bonus can come into play later on in the raiding game.
[top]The Rotational Basis
Every single possible situation can be described as a modification of the BT-WW-BT combination. Since BT will always have the highest DPS due to its low cooldown, it will always have the highest opportunity cost with delaying it. No matter what, you will always see the pattern repeat of BT-WW-BT, with some amount of slams or other abilities in between. Based on the positions of the Slam procs and due to Heroic Strikes and abilities casted before, this pattern will have variable differences in time between abilities based on when Slam is used and GCD crowding. When we talk about deciding when to use Slam procs and it’s ramifications, we will always discuss any delays incurred on this BT-WW-BT pattern. This text will reuse the term „rotational basis“ quite often, and it’s definition is basically the optimal way of using BT, WW, and Slam.
A frequently asked question is when to use Bloodsurge Slams and when not to. In the rotational basis, these Slams are used in places that do not delay the BT-WW-BT pattern unless the proc (the actual Bloodsurge buff) will expire before you can use it. There are only a few unique locations in the rotation where a proc can occur and expire later if not used. These locations in the rotational timeline can differ depending on the player’s lag and reaction time. The following are the three locations for slam usage which optimizes the rotational basis:
- After the 2nd BT but before the point where if Slam was hit, its GCD would result in DPS loss from BT/WW delay.
- Before the 1st BT in the next period if immediately after a critical ability or Slam which trails the 2nd BT if it will expire before the WW GCD in the next period is finished.
- Before the 2nd BT if it will expire before the 2nd BT’s GCD finishes.
This will not only minimize losses from Bloodsurge being overwritten, but also minimizes any losses from delaying BT or WW when Slam needs to be used. All rotations adapt on this principle. In a lagless (and 0 reaction time) environment, following these rules will create four variants of the rotational basis. A 8.0s period, two 8.5s periods, and a 9.0s period which are shown below.
| 8.0s Period | 8.5s Period | 8.5s Period | 9.0s Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seconds Action 0.0Bloodthirst1.5Whirlwind4.0Bloodthirst5.5-6.5Slam8.0Bloodthirst, Start of next period | Seconds Action 0.0Bloodthirst1.5Whirlwind3.0Expiring Slam4.5Bloodthirst6.0-7.0Slam8.5Bloodthirst, Start of next period | Seconds Action 0.0Bloodthirst1.5Whirlwind4.0Bloodthirst5.5Slam7.0Expiring Slam8.5Bloodthirst, Start of next period | Seconds Action 0.0Bloodthirst1.5Whirlwind3.0Expiring Slam4.5Bloodthirst6.0Slam7.5Expiring Slam9.0Bloodthirst, Start of next period |
An 8.0s period would occur if a Bloodsurge Slam was not available after the 1st BT nor immediately before the 1st BT in the next period. The 8.5s period can occur if a Bloodsurge Slam needed to be used before the 2nd BT per rule (2). Due to latency, reaction time, and human error issues, these perfect rotations always become broken or stretched. The 2.5 seconds after the 2nd BT’s GCD finishes is especially sensitive. The player must be able to react to a new proc and decide if it needs to be used right away or if it can be saved for the 1.0s space after the WW’s GCD. A proper decision relies on when the proc occurred, either before or after what is called a time-intercept point, or intercept for short. Determining the exact intercept for a specific player requires a bit of math, which will be fully shown in later sections. It is basically derived from an equation using your reaction time, latency, the sum of two GCDs (BT and WW), the 5s Bloodsurge is active, the weighting of damage versus time between a Slam and BT/WW, and the chance Bloodsurge will proc again in the time elapsed. Without going through all the math to find the exact value, a good practice is to use a fresh Bloodsurge proc if it will not delay the BT more than a couple tenths of a second. If you do not have good latency or reaction time, then you can afford to delay BT more than this, else risk your proc expiring before you can hit it after the WW GCD. This is backwards, but remember these procs are only 5 seconds, regardless of how long it takes you to finish GCDs due to latency.
The best way to get a feel for the rotational basis concept is to practice. Spend a good amount of time on a target dummy going through the rotation. Follow the three rules posted above. Pay attention to when you get your procs, and how long of a duration they have left. Get a feel for what procs you can let sit, and what procs you must use. Having a specialized user interface can streamline the monitoring and decision-making process, which is discussed in section 16.
[top]Using other GCD abilities
Often there are times where we have to use other abilities outside of BT, WW, or Slam such as Death Wish, shouts, Recklessness, etc. If you can, it is best to plan to use these abilities after the 2nd BT if you have no Bloodsurge available. Sometimes you are faced with choosing between this ability and a Slam if you do not wish to step out of the rotational basis. This is where the 9.0s period can come into play.
| Seconds | Action |
|---|---|
| 0.0 | Bloodthirst |
| 1.5 | Whirlwind |
| 3.0 | Expiring Slam / Ability |
| 4.5 | Bloodthirst |
| 6.0 | Ability |
| 7.5 | Expiring Slam / Ability |
| 9.0 | Bloodthirst, Start of next period |
When faced with GCD crowding like this, the 1.0s space in between WW and the 2nd BT is only used by an expiring Slam or a critical ability. The spaces after the 2nd BT can be used with a critical ability or Slam, where the ability comes first usually because it will be more important. You must know ahead of time which non-BT/WW space you will use critical abilities in, so that old Slam procs do not expire before the ability GCD is finished. Use an expiring proc in the 1.0s space between WW and the 2nd BT. A non-expiring Slam is usually very low priority compared to other abilities that you will need to use. These abilities should either increase your DPS, keep you alive, or provide large group benefit. Abilities with a GCD and minor benefit, like Berserker Rage, should be avoided.
[top]Minimizing Damage Loss, Furynomics
The best way to look at this problem quantitatively is by making decisions based on minimizing potential damage loss between the three different abilities and not simply forgoing Bloodsurge procs or overusing them while performing an in-optimal rotation. One would use one ability over another based on what their cooldown is and where they are on that cooldown and if they have Slam! ready to use. It is not obviously clear what is best to hit over something else, so we turn to economics, math, and probability. A term that is thrown around constantly is opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is the cost of passing up the next best choice when making a decision of any number of possibilities. If you have 5 possibilities, the opportunity cost is the amount that you don’t get form the 2nd best choice, when choosing to do the first best choice. For example, the opportunity cost of using Bloodsurge ahead of BT is the damage you will lose to pushing back BT and WW. WW also gets pushed back because WW always follows the BT due to the GCD lockout from BT.
When deciding what to do, it is best to make the decision based on which option has the lowest opportunity cost. We use math then to calculate the opportunity cost of possible scenarios and then come up with a set of rules to follow, which will govern our rotation. To be able to use different abilities in a comparison, we need an average value of power to assign to each based on your stats and happenings with the hit table.
[top]Value of Bloodthirst
While it does not hit as hard as Whirlwind, Bloodthirst deals more sustained damage because it has a smaller cooldown. It scales the fastest due to its straight conversion from your attack power.
Where WD is the weapon’s average damage in its tooltip
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and D is the main hand dodge rate if any
and M is the main hand special miss rate if any
and C is the main hand special crit rate
and S is the speed of the main hand weapon listed in it’s tooltip
and DIM is the total amount of periodic or average multipliers such as Death Wish or Hysteria or raid buffs if you wish to consider them. Don’t forget Trauma/Mangle for DWounds.
1.0494 is the total talented multiplier (1.06*0.9*1.1)
This „BloodthirstPower“ value can then used to find losses when delaying the Bloodthirst. To determine a „loss“ in Bloodthirst if it were to occur, you take the delay amount in seconds and divide it by 4 seconds, Bloodthirst’s cooldown. Here’s a picture:
[top]Value of Whirlwind
Fully talented, Whirlwind is our hardest-hitting ability. It scales almost as fast as Bloodthirst, plus it tacks on the damage of both of your weapons. However, it has a long cooldown and does less overall DPS than Bloodthirst. The DWounds damage from WW suffers frequently from a phenomenon called munching, which happens when two abilities crit simultaneously and the server cannot identify the previous crit(s). The chance to get main hand DWounds damage is the chance to not get an offhand crit multiplied by the chance to get a main hand crit, while the chance to get off hand DWounds damage is the chance to get an off hand crit. Most of the time these crit chances will be the same, but due to some racial and weapon combinations and hit table calculations they can be different. You will see more chances of damage from the off hand strike of Whirlwind.
You can see the munching effect in the following table:
| C_m | C_o | cm | co |
|---|---|---|---|
| .35 | .35 | .2275 | .35 |
| .40 | .40 | .24 | .40 |
| .45 | .45 | .2475 | .45 |
| .50 | .50 | .25 | .50 |
| .55 | .55 | .2475 | .55 |
| .60 | .60 | .24 | .60 |
This displays an effect of slight diminishing returns with increases in crit chance and DWounds damage from your main hand Whirlwind strike. In fact, it is actually capped at a 25% chance without taking racial differences into account.
Where WD is the corresponding weapon’s average damage in its tooltip
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and S is the corresponding weapon’s speed in its tooltip
and D is the corresponding weapon’s dodge rate if any
and M is the corresponding weapon’s miss rate if any
and C is the corresponding weapon’s special crit rate
and DIM is the total amount of periodic or average multipliers such as Death Wish or Hysteria or raid buffs if you wish to consider them. Don’t forget Trauma/Mangle for DWounds.
1.25928 is the total talented multiplier for Whirlwind (0.9*1.06*1.1*1.2)
This „WhirlwindPower“ value can then used to find losses when delaying the Whirlwind. To determine a „loss“ in Whirlwind if it were to occur, you take the delay amount in seconds and divide it by 8 seconds, Whirlwind’s cooldown. Here’s a picture:
[top]Value of Bloodsurge
Compared to Whirlwind and Bloodthirst, Slams are generally weaker and scale slower even with the 2 piece bonus from tier7 or 4 piece tier9.
Where WD is the weapon’s average damage in its tooltip
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and D is the main hand dodge rate if any
and M is the main hand special miss rate if any
and C is the main hand special crit rate, +5% extra if 2tier9
and S is the speed of the main hand weapon listed in it’s tooltip
and DIM is the total amount of periodic or average multipliers such as Death Wish or Hysteria or raid buffs if you wish to consider them. Don’t forget Trauma/Mangle for DWounds.
1.0494 is the total talented multiplier for Slam (0.9*1.1*1.06)
[1.1] is the effect of the 2t7 bonus, if there is none disregard the multiplier
[top]Bloodsurge Probability
Another part of the puzzle is figuring out the probability that a Bloodsurge will be available at a specific moment, or the probability a Bloodsurge will overwrite itself before it can be used. A Bloodsurge has a 20% chance to occur after any BT, WW, or Heroic Strike. This translates to the equivalent statement that Bloodsurge has an 80% chance to not occur after any of those attacks. Bloodsurge can either be inactive: not available to use, active: available to use, or overwritten: the current proc is erased by a new proc. Using simple probability math, we can find the chance for all 3 events to be true or untrue in any combination we wish.
Let’s say we wanted to find the chance that a new Bloodsurge will proc after a Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, and 2 Heroic Strikes and the GCD becomes available. There are 4 events in total that can cause the proc to occur. Instead of multiplying 20% by itself four times (which gives smaller and smaller numbers and doesn’t really make sense) we find the chance that it will not proc and then subtract that chance from 1. The chance it will not be up after any event is 80%, and itself multiplied with itself four times gives 40.96%. Therefore the chance Bloodsurge will be active after all four events is 59.04%. The table below illustrates the chances of proc activity per number of events 1 through 8.
| events | calculation | chance | value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1-(1-0.2) | 20% | 0.2 |
| 2 | 1-(1-0.2)*(1-0.2) | 36% | 0.36 |
| 3 | 1-((1-0.2)^3) | 48.8% | 0.488 |
| 4 | 1-((1-0.2)^4) | 59.04% | 0.5904 |
| 5 | 1-((1-0.2)^5) | 67.232% | 0.67232 |
| 6 | 1-((1-0.2)^6) | 73.7856% | 0.737856 |
| 7 | 1-((1-0.2)^7) | 79.02848% | 0.7902848 |
| 8 | 1-((1-0.2)^8) | 83.222784% | 0.83222784 |
Now we can take this logic further. Say for example, a new Bloodsurge just procced, and it has a full 5 seconds left on its timer, plenty of time to hit it after other abilities, and our BT has 0.4s left on its timer, and our WW has 2.0s left on its timer. Is it better to get rid of the Bloodsurge before hitting BT/WW with 2 Heroics across all the GCDs, or wait to hit it after BT/WW/Heroics and take the chance that the Bloodsurge will not overwrite? With Bloodsurge probability and power values of all of our skills, we can make this decision clearly. Using the table, we know a 4-event has a 59.04% chance of yielding a new Bloodsurge, or in this case, overwriting the old one. Believe it or not, an overwritten Bloodsurge is a DPS loss of an entire Slam, the same as an opportunity cost of an entire Slam.
For example, let’s say you had a 250ms total reaction time (latency+reaction in milliseconds) which would make your GCDs 1.75 seconds long, and you were spamming Heroic Strike at 2.5 second intervals. If you hit that Bloodsurge the instant it registered in your brain and pressed the button, it would take you 0.25 seconds. There was a Heroic at 0.5s inside the GCD, which also would take you all the way to 2.0s, delaying BT by 1.6s. Once the GCD from BT has completed, you hit your WW at time 3.75s, a delay of 1.75s. There was also another Heroic at 3.0s, which could potentially overwrite the potential Slam at 0.5s. Your opportunity cost of this decision is as follows:
Using example values of:
Opportunity cost slam first
Using the same example values, hitting your BT/WW/Heroics first yields the opportunity cost only of losing the slam you already had due to those overwrite chances.
Opportunity cost of slam last
As you can see, delaying your BT and WW to try and save a Slam is not a very good idea and has a higher opportunity cost than letting it go. In most situations letting a Slam go to hit your BT and/or WW on time is the better choice, but there are some situations where using the Bloodsurge right away is better and yields you more damage. The set of possible situations that can be decided on rank in the dozens, and it is very difficult to grasp everyone when playing in game. That does not mean they can’t be calculated by use of our methods previously described.
[top]Delaying 1st BT
There is usually some free GCD space preceding the repeat mark of the BT-WW-BT pattern. That means that a Bloodsurge can proc during this free space and we must make a decision whether to hit it or not based on how near the BT is. We can find the the point in time in which we may still safely use the Bloodsurge and is called the time-intercept. Any use of the Bloodsurge after the time-intercept will then net a DPS loss. To find the time-intercept, we must find the time where both the opportunity cost of slam overwriting and the loss of the BT and WW are equal. Once we have the intercept, we can subtract it from the total GCD size to find the absolute latest time (using a mod like OmiCC you can track ability cooldowns in tenths of seconds) we can hit Slam.
When making the decision whether to slam before one of these BT’s, we must consider the following WW and also the potential Heroics that can overwrite within the GCD’s. Usually there can be between 2 and 4 (sometimes 5 to 7 with insane swing speed and/or silly lag) events that can overwrite the Slam: 2 if no Heroics are used, 3 for 1, and 4 for 2. Again, consult the probability chart for the appropriate value. Let’s also assume that you can hit WW immediately after BT (there is an odd situation where WW will not immediately follow the BT). We also assume that the 1.5s delay of hitting WW after BT is a non-factor since that always occurs naturally. When considering delaying two abilities, the opportunity cost equation is as follows:
(BTpower/4+WWpower/8)*Delay+Slampower*overwriteprobability1 = Slampower*overwriteprobability2
Delay = Slampower*(overwriteprobability2-overwriteprobability1)/(BTpower/4+WWpower/8)
Remaining = (1.5+lag)-Delay
Note that if overwrite probabilities are equal, then we’re out and cannot delay BT and WW to get any gain from Slam. Depending on exactly where your Heroic Strikes are within the GCD’s, and how many there are, overwriteprobability1 can equal overwriteprobability2 but very rarely. The chance is equal to the chance of a Heroic Being inside the delay space. For example, if your delay space was allowed at 0.256 (1 Heroic vs 0 Heroic example below) and you use a Heroic every 2.5 seconds, this chance would be 0.256/2.5=10.24%. This goes down with lower frequency of Heroic Strikes.
When looking at delaying and overwriteprobability1, the chance following the Slam use is not counted, since it cannot overwrite, since you just cleared your proc. Any chances after and up to when the WW GCD clears is considered an overwrite. When looking at not delaying, all Heroics following the proc you are deciding to spend until when the WW GCD clears is considered an overwrite chance.
Let’s take a look at each possible Heroic Strike quantity combination.
0 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(0.36-0.36)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0=1.7
4 Heroics vs 3 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(0.737856-0.67232)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.131072
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.131072 = 1.568928
3 Heroics vs 2 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(0.67232-0.5904)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.16384
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.16384 = 1.53616
2 Heroics vs 1 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(0.5904-0.488)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.2048
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.2048=1.4952
1 Heroic vs 0 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(0.488-0.36)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.256
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.256=1.444
One might think the less chance to overwrite Slam the better, but due to the GCD cap it is almost the opposite. Due to the GCD cap and Slam using a GCD, you lose Slam all the time even if you cannot help it. So what’s the difference between losing Slam all the time, versus losing Slam all the time a little bit less? Yeah, not a lot. Even with low chances to overwrite, you cannot delay the first BT too far without losing. If your gear favors BT for example, or if you have low latency, then delaying even a little bit is a terrible idea.
A much bigger concern is when a new proc occurs after the intercept. The proc can completely fall off due to lag before the WW GCD ends. If your total GCD is greater than 1.625 seconds (your latency plus reaction time is greater than 125ms), then you have to make this special consideration. Say your WW and BT take up 3.250 seconds of space, and your bloodsurge proc occurs before 1.625 seconds preceeding your BT cooldown, then it will expire before you can press it after the WW, resulting in a 100% Slam loss instead of a smaller one. This is the same as overwriteprobability2=1. Here’s some boolean which shows the lag threshold:
if 3*(1.5+lag)+lag>5 then check falloff
if 4.5+4*lag>5 then check falloff
if 4*lag>.5 then check falloff
if lag>125ms then check falloff
Let’s look at the example of having the 1.7s GCD:
| 1.4s | 0.2s | 1.5s | 0.2s | 1.5s | 0.2s | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloodsurge procs | lag | BT GCD | lag | WW GCD | lag | Bloodsurge Expires |
The last 0.2s at absolute minimum are needed to react plus hit the key on your keyboard and have the server recognize the command before it expires. So it if procs before the 1.4s mark on BT’s cooldown, then it will expire because you won’t have enough time, leaving you with a 100% Slam loss. It’s safe to say that, with 200ms, any Bloodsurge active before 1.4s will expire and you can ignore the previous rules and follow a new set.
Same rules apply here when calculating opportunity cost. Only this time use 100% for overwriteprobability2. Remember to add a chance to overwiteprobability1 if you get a Heroic inside your delaytime.
vs 3 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(1-0.67232)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.65536
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.65536 = 1.04464
vs 2 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(1-0.5904)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 0.8192
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-0.8192 = 0.8808
vs 1 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(1-0.488)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 1.024
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-1.024=0.676
vs 0 Heroics
Delay = 5000*(1-0.36)/(6000/4+8000/8) = 1.28
Remaining = 1.5+0.2-1.28=0.42
These are considered as new intercepts for new procs after the first intercept. All of this information is nice and great, but how does one find out how many Heroics they can do in a given period of time? When looking at time frames for Heroic Strikes, we need to look at the 3 GCD space of the Slam+BT+WW. Take your 3GCD size and divide it by your average main hand swing speed. For example, 5.1/2.5=2.04. This means you will always have 2 swings and sometimes 3 in that timeframe. How often do you swing 3 times? (5-2.5*2)/2.5 = 4% is the answer. You get 3 swings 4% of the time, and 2 swings 96% of the time. If you want to get fancy, using HSF (covered in section 6.1) you can find the probability you will land any combination of Heroic Strikes on any number of swings.
[top]Delaying 2nd BT
There are two different situations to consider here. The first one is a Bloodsurge that is carried over from passing the time-intercept on the first BT and being left over, almost expiring. The second is a fresher Slam that will not expire after the next BT’s GCD is finished.
If you hit this Slam, you will lose a certain amount from your next BT, and the WW following the BT after depending on your lag. Without hitting the Slam, your BT will be perfectly on time. However if you do, you will lose 0.5 seconds on it plus 2x your lag amount from crowding.
That’s 1x for the WW plus another 1x from your Slam. Here’s a picture:
| Without Slam | With Slam |
|---|---|
| seconds ability 0.0+1xlagBT1.5+2xlagWW3.0+3xlagwait4.0+2xlagBT | seconds ability 0.0+lagBT1.5+2xlagWW3.0+3xlagSlam4.5+4xlagBT |
With the delay on following BT, also comes with a delay on the following WW. So therefore, you will also lose 0.5 seconds on it plus 2x your lag amount from crowding the same way as its preceding BT. Here’s an expanded picture:
| Without Slam | With Slam |
|---|---|
| seconds ability 0.0+1xlagBT1.5+2xlagWW3.0+3xlagwait4.0+2xlagBT5.5+3xlagfree8.0+3xlagBT9.5+4xlagWW | seconds ability 0.0+1xlagBT1.5+2xlagWW3.0+3xlagSlam4.5+4xlagBT6.0+5xlagfree8.5+5xlagBT10.0+6xlagWW |
loss = (0.5+2xlag)*(WWpower/8+BTpower/4)
Let’s look at the leftover Bloodsurge that’s about to run out if you don’t use it right away. Should you use it? Let’s find out. Usually you are pressured to hit this Slam right away after the WW or it will expire quickly, without much time to think. Assuming 200 ms and example powers:
(0.9)*(8000/8+6000/4) = 2250
1.000*5000 = 5000
The cost of losing the Slam is more than double the cost of delaying the abilities, so it’s safe to say you can use the Slam before it expires no matter what.
Now let’s look at the fresher Slam that will not expire after the next BT’s GCD is finished. We want to see if it is better to get rid of it earlier rather than later, seeing if the extra Bloodsurge chances add up to greater than the WW+BT loss. Firstly, we assume that the non-expiring Bloodsurge can be hit in both cases. Then, we compare the timeframes for reproccing Bloodsurges. For slamming early, the timeframe is 2 GCDs, equalling 3s+2xlag. For slamming late, it comes down to the minimum value between 0.5+2xlag and 1.5+lag. If lag is not more than 1000ms then it’s always 0.5+2xlag.
So then let’s compare:
early: 5000*(1+(1-.8^(1+heroicsintimeframe1)))-(0.9)*(8000/8+6000/4)
to
later: 5000*(1+(1-.8^(1+heroicsintimeframe2)))
Let’s say for the extremist example you get 2 Heroics in timeframe1 and none in timeframe2.
early: 5000*(1+(1-.8^(3)))-(0.9)*(8000/8+6000/4) = 1.488*5000-2250 = 5190
to
later: 5000*(1+(1-.8^(1))) = 1.2*5000 = 6000
The difference in value is not great, but using the Slam later wins out. Even with 2 piece tier7, the early Slam still loses. General gear increase also favors BT and WW more than Slam, since they are larger and scale faster than Slam.
[top]Delaying WW
There are two different situations to consider here. The first one is a Slam that is either carried over from passing the time-intercept on the first BT or a newly procced one from that BT. The second situation occurs from the first.
Should we slide it in before the WW or wait until after and slide it in before the BT? Assuming you slide it in, you are going to theoretically gain 20% or 36% of a Slam based on if you Heroic Strike or not inside the WW GCD, and then lose a certain amount of WW damage and in addition some further Slam chance. Why? Let’s look at the Slam occurring immediately before the WW. If one were ever to delay a WW with Slam, WW’s GCD will always overlap a BT. We must always consider WW with BT when deciding whether we can hit slam to delay it. Here’s a picture:
| Without Slam | With Slam |
|---|---|
| seconds ability 0.0BT1.5+1xlagWW3.0+1xlagwait4.0+1xlagBT5.5+1xlagfree8.0+2xlagBT9.5+3xlagWW11.0+3xlagwait12.0+3xlagBT | seconds ability 0.0BT1.5+1xlagSlam3.0+2xlagWW4.5+3xlagBT6.0+3xlagfree8.5+4xlagBT10.0+4xlagwait11.0+3xlagWW12.5+5xlagBT |
Notice how the second WW after the Slam delay can be hit sooner in relation to the first WW and the non-Slam period. WW is delayed 1.5s minus 1xlag per 2 BT’s. The WW delay becomes smaller over time, eventually back on track with its original position on the BT-WW-BT track. Due to lag, WW and BT cooldown periods become indivisible. For example, if your lag is 200ms, WW cooldown will be 8.2s and BT will be 4.2s, which are not factors of eachother: 8.2s is smaller than 8.4s. The following WWs availabilities slide backward between the surrounding BT’s. The lower your lag, the longer it takes for WW to slide back to its original position.
| 0 lag |
| 1.5 4.0 1.5 1.0 1.5 4.0 1.5 1.0 1.5 BT..Slam..WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT |
| 100ms lag |
| 1.6 4.1 1.6 0.8 1.6 0.1 4.1 1.6 0.7 1.6 0.2 4.1 1.6 0.6 1.6 0.3 BT..Slam..WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT |
| 200ms lag |
| 1.7 4.2 1.7 0.6 1.7 0.2 4.2 1.7 0.4 1.7 0.4 4.2 1.7 0.2 1.7 0.6 BT..Slam..WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT |
| 300ms lag |
| 1.8 4.3 1.8 0.4 1.8 0.3 4.3 1.8 0.1 1.8 0.6 4.3 1.8 1.8 0.7 BT..Slam..WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT BT WW BT |
This is not necessarily a good thing, as the crowding in the following combinations due to this backward sliding causes issues with possible future Bloodsurge procs. We can’t really count a BT loss here because it is the same as using Slam in the position after WW. Now that we see the bigger picture, we can start comparing a 20% or 36% Slam gain to the theoretical WW and crowded Slam loss. The WW loss amounts to an average of all WW delays across how long it takes the WW to fully slide back. This can be realistically anywhere from .25s (250ms) to .5s (0ms). What is the chance of a Slam proccing during these slideback periods? Slams that we can’t really use? 20%, 36%, 48.8%, depending on Heroic Strikes… Conclusively, trying to sneak a Slam in directly before a WW will generally make you pass up the same if not more chances for Slams later, plus a little bit of WW damage.
[top]Conclusions
Most of the complex possible situations become eliminated after using the methods described above. We essentially come down to only being able to use Slam in 3 positions which was stated in the rotational basis section:
- After the 2nd BT but before the intercept point.
- Before the 1st BT in the next period if immediately after a critical ability or Slam which trails the 2nd BT if it will expire before the WW GCD in the next period is finished.
- Before the 2nd BT if it will expire before the 2nd BT GCD finishes.
Ability power values vary greatly between different warriors. When I personally had good Ulduar gear during 3.1, my values were 9177, 7358, and 5613 for WW, BT and Slam. After Icecrown progression in 3.3 with the 15% buff, they were 17533, 13289, and 10879 for WW, BT and Slam. Compared these to the much lower example values I used in this section. I also have low latency and reaction time, with very high HSF. This gives large weight to not delaying my WW and BT for Slams, since when played correctly I can have enough Slams to use in optimal positions.
High latency and reaction times and using abilities in their incorrect positions will severely punish your rotational DPS. On top of that, if you are not saving Slams correctly it will also crowd your rage spending, These guidelines are not very forgiving and will severely punish you for mistakes, unless you get very lucky with procs.
There are some slight gains in item proc uptime from having more attacks per second by squeezing in Slams that were not included in the described methods, however their value is not comparable. Any overwrites of Bloodsurges within a certain GCD after you have made a decision not to use it then are strictly RNG and out of your control. Don’t worry about them.
[top]Using Execute after 20%
When the target is below 20%, you may start using Execute. Since Execute does not require a proc to use and only a GCD, it is optimal to use it any place where there is space basically. Once in this phase, your primary limited resource becomes your GCD since an attack can be made on every chance instead of most of the time. Yes, they have different rage costs, however you should be making enough to spend at least 30 rage per GCD because you won’t need to dump rage into Heroic Strikes. Instead you are dumping rage into the cost of Executes, and with great combat ratings, you can also sometimes dump into Heroic Strikes simultaneously. When GCD capped and not rage capped, it is best to be able to use the strongest ability available per each GCD.
Unless you are dual-wielding pixie sticks, WW will always hit harder than Execute. Execute scales very poorly with gear in WotLK. It used to be back in The Burning Crusade that it was stronger than Whirlwind and sometimes Bloodthirst due to it not having a 30 rage cap. Back then, Execute scaled very well with gear because you could convert all of your rage into damage. Now though, the scaling is limited to the 30 rage cap and it’s base cost, along with some conversion of attack power to damage. Also, unlike BT, WW, or Slam, it has no damage increasing modifiers through talents, but only a cost reduction. Execute may sometimes hit harder than Bloodthirst at lower AP levels and with it glyphed and talented. These points are shown in the following table and are called intercept points. This is barring of course, the 4 piece tier 8 bonus which increases the crit chance of BT.
| bonus rage | AP intercept | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 4160 | 2183 |
| 5 | 4703 | 2468 |
| 10 | 5246 | 2753 |
| 15 | 5789 | 3037 |
| 20 | 6332 | 3322 |
| 25 | 6874 | 3607 |
| 30 | 7417 | 3892 |
108.566AP/bonusrage
If you talent and glyph your Execute, stay above 30 rage mostly, and have lower than 7500 AP buffed, you can use Execute over BT. Else, if you are sure that your BT will hit harder than Execute, then you follow the pattern of the 9.0s rotational basis, weaving in Execute. This turns the pattern into BT-WW-Execute-BT-Execute-Execute. Execute can and should be replaced by other important abilities as described before, and also sometimes by Slam depending on what your rage income is, and what rage level you are at when you use the Execute. It is important to note if you are dipping to around 30 rage, your execute may bottom you out preventing you from using BT or WW. It’s best practice to not Heroic Strike as often, and to only Heroic Strike when your rage is higher than normal during Execute phase, as your goal is to not dip to where a GCD will be missed. If your rage does dip to where BT or WW cannot be used in their proper place, it is okay to hit Execute or Slam instead if it will ensure that an ability is landed on that GCD.
Comparing Slam to Execute in terms of raw damage done per GCD is sensitive to your main hand weapon’s speed and damage range, your attack power, if you glyped or talented for Execute, and the current rage level you have. Let’s break down the strike strength for Execute as we did other abilities.
where Cost is 15 minus 2 or 5 for Improved Execute talent
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and D is the main hand dodge rate if any
and M is the main hand special miss rate if any
and C is the main hand special crit rate
and DIM is the total amount of periodic or average multipliers such as Death Wish or Hysteria or raid buffs if you wish to consider them.
Now that you have an idea how Execute does damage, let’s compare it to Slam’s strike damage with varying attack powers and main hand weapons‘ speeds and ranges.
| [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver], 5500 AP | [Armageddon], 5900 AP | [Edge of Ruin], 6300 AP | [Justicebringer], 7400 AP | [Shadow’s Edge], 9000 AP | [Shadowmourne], 10800 AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bonus rage damage Slam2196-24630243852620102801152982203163253345303526 | bonus rage damage Slam2347-26380251552696102877153059203240253421303602 | bonus rage damage Slam2538-28510259152772102954153135203316253497303679 | bonus rage damage Slam3032-34190280152982103163153345203526253707303889 | bonus rage damage Slam3673-41320310653287103469153650203831254013304194 | bonus rage damage Slam4259-49280345053631103812153993204175254356304537 |
As you can see, there are some points where using a Bloodsurge Slam over Execute will deal more damage. In the case of being lucky enough to wield [Shadowmourne] and own heroic Icecrown gear, Slam will always outdamage Execute even when talenting and glyphing for it. Also, Slam will almost always cost less than Execute (unless your rage is very low and have Improved Execute) which in turn will allow you to maybe throw in an extra Heroic Strike. One must use their own judgement on what ability to use at what time.
When using the 4 piece tier10 battlegear, it’s special Bloodsurge proc has a 1.0s GCD, and using both stacks of this proc ahead of Execute is best.
[top]Sundering Armor Required
If you are required to maintain a Sunder stack on the target, then it is best to get 5 stacks up as fast as possible without sacrificing your BT and WW damage. Use it in the places where you would normally use a Slam, except in all possible positions. That is, after the WW, and twice after the 2nd BT for a 9.0s rotational basis. It is best to blow your Death Wish as your first GCD however, since you won’t have time to activate it while you are sundering, and also because your trinkets will probably proc while you are sundering. If you don’t activate Death Wish right away, then your trinket buffs might expire before you can finish sundering and start slamming, and you will partly miss out on a great buff stack.
Maintain Sunder Armor by re-applying it after the 2nd BT in the absense of a Bloodsurge proc if it has less than 10s left. You must know ahead of time which space you will do this in, so that old procs do not expire before the Sunder GCD is finished. Use an expiring proc in the 1.0s space between WW and the 2nd BT. If you happen to have a newer Bloodsurge proc, or get a new one before the intercept time while still locked out of your GCD from Sunder, you must use it before the 1st BT of the next period or else it will have expired after the WW.
The worst thing that can happen is the Sunder stack falls off, in which you would need to reapply them again, losing a great deal of DPS. Therefore it is very important to reapply them effectively in the correct position, not only so that it does not fall off, but also so you can minimize your losses from overlapped and/or expired Bloodsurge procs, and delays of BT/WW.
[top]Using Rend
It is effective to use Rend in a rotation in if your rage generation is very generous. This could include having great combat ratings and powerful autoattacks, or being fed rage through taking damage. Rend is used after the 2nd BT if there is no Bloodsurge available. There is a stance change to Battle Stance, so rage will drop down to maximum of 25 with the Tactical Mastery talents, Rend is used and you will return back to Berserker Stance with that maximum. It is very possible that your autoattacks will land within the 1s you are in Battle Stance, so a stoppage of Heroic Strike is required while in Battle Stance, and a time after the return to Berserker so that you don’t accidentally starve yourself of rage to where you can’t use BT. Since there are no Heroic Strikes for a time, there is no chance for a new Bloodsurge.
Rend can be anywhere from 1.5-2.0% representation for a gain of about 1% overall damage unglyphed, and 2.1-2.8% representation for a gain of about 1.5% overall damage glyphed. Glyphing Rend would replace Glyph of Execution in single-target only scenarios. It is recommended that only very advanced players utilize this in their rotation due to its small net gain, and very large penalty if mishandled.
[top]Implications of 4 piece tier 10 Battlegear
At the end of WotLK, Warriors have access to the Ymirjar Lord’s Battlegear Set. It’s 4 piece bonus converts 20% of all Bloodsurge procs into a special one with two charges that lasts 10 seconds, and each charge only uses a 1.0s GCD instead of 1.5s. This also means that once you have a 4t10 proc, a regular Bloodsurge cannot replace it no matter its duration left because the game’s internal mechanics prevent weaker buffs from overriding stronger ones. With this set, any event that can proc Bloodsurge will now get you normal procs 16% of the time, and a double stack 4% of the time.
This opens up a whole new amount of possible rotation combinations. The two key benefits to these special procs are that they will never expire before you are able to use them (unless you are sundering) and they reduce period sizes with its 1.0s GCD. A charge can be spent between WW and its following BT with only an instance of lag of delay. Two whole charges can be spent after the 2nd BT without any delay in the 1st BT of the next period. A charge can be spent between a critical ability after the 2nd BT and the 1st BT of the next period with only two instances of lag of delay. And many more. These charges can be used anywhere except for after the 1.0s intercept point preceding the 1st BT in the next period.
1.0s Slam Intercept = 1.5s Slam intercept – 0.5
Exact DPS gain values can’t be shown as they will be different between specific players and gearsets.
[top]Rage Management
A majority of the skill involved when playing a PvE DPS Fury warrior comes with the ability to manage your rage income properly. It is your responsibility to be able to judge how much of your income can be spent on Heroic strike or Cleave, and at what times. Modifying your user interface to be able to effectively track your rage at all times will make this concept so much easier. An example of a frame addon is Pitbull which can be downloaded from any WoW interface website. A mod like this can change the size, position, appearance, and anchor of your rage bar to your liking. UI modifications beneficial to Fury Warriors are discussed in section 16. To be able to manage your rage to its full potential, you must understand the mechanics behind its generation.
[top]Blizzard’s Rage generation Formula
Your rage generation comes in two parts. First a normalized portion, which gives you a specific amount of rage based on if you crit or not crit, which weapon you hit with, and it’s base speed. Second a scaling portion, which gives you a specific amount of rage based on how much white damage was done on that particular hit.
The normalized portion of the formula is described as such:
| Weapon | Crit | Hit or Glance |
|---|---|---|
| Main Hand | f=7 | f=3.5 |
| Off Hand | f=3.5 | f=1.75 |
s=base weapon speed
The scaling portion of the formula is based off of how much white damage is dealt per strike and involves a constant c and variable d.
where **c = 453.3 for level 80 characters.
and d = white damage done on strike.
Combining the normalized and scaling portions, we arrive at:
which is defined as rage gained per white melee hit. Now, using a LOT of algebra and simplification, one can arrive at a basic rage per second formula which takes into consideration multiple factors:
where:
DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
C is the crit chance for represented hand
B is the crit bonus for represented hand, 1.06
M is the white miss chance for represented hand
D is the dodge chance for represented hand
G is the glance chance, which is .24 for bosses
r is the reduction factor for glances, which is .35 on average for bosses
R is the average damage range of the represented hand with consideration of DIMs
S is the average speed in which the represented hand is swinging at with consideration of all IAS
IAS is the average amount of increased attack speed calculated as a multiplier from haste, flurry, speeds, etc. For example, 90% uptime on 25% flurry, 10% haste, and 20% speed effect yields a value of (1+.25*.9)*1.1*1.2=1.617
**The constant c is derived from a formula that scales up with level and is 453.3 at level 80.
Note that dodged attacks still grant the normalized rage portion as a hit would, but 0 rage from the damage portion. Hit and Haste rating are the stats that most scale rage generation, followed by crit rating. Due to normalization, STR/AP/ArP aren’t as important as rage generating boosters, which a common misconception.
[top]Taking damage and Berserker Rage
Not only do warriors gain rage by hitting, they also gain it by taking damage. This aspect is what sets us apart from all other dps classes in which we can deal more damage if we take it and is huge when you use Berserker Rage properly. We use the same constant c and variable d here to determine rage gained.
becomes…
This translates simply to 1 rage every 181 damage. When you use the Berserker Rage ability, you generate 1 rage every 60 to 61 damage. If you have 0 rage, it only takes 6044 damage to fill it up to 100. This makes hitting the Berserker Rage ability in between your normal rotational GCDs in anticipation of taking damage will flood you of very welcome rage to use on all of your abilities and Heroic Strike spam. In rage starving scenarios, this can mean the difference between hitting 1 Heroic Strike to hitting 5 in a row. Berserker Rage lasts for 10 seconds, and can be used every 20 to 30 seconds depending on if you have points in the Intensify Rage talent, which you should.
[top]Rage Income and Budget
Rage income is simply defined as how quickly you gain rage. You must be able to figuratively judge your rage income to be able to determine at what rate it can be spent on various abilities. Regardless of buffs, unless you are severely under-geared, you will be able to have enough rage to complete your WW, BT, and Slam! cycle. Any extra rage income ahead of that is focused into turning out Heroic Strikes. Your rage income determines how often you can turn Heroic Strikes. Let’s say for example, your WW, BT, and Slam! cycle uses 10.5 rage per second, while your total rage income was 23 rage per second. This gives you 12.5 rage per second to turn Heroic Strikes with.
[top]Rage Banking and Rotational Periodic Rage Use
Naturally when you have solid footing and are DPSing, you are going to be hitting Heroic Strike in conjunction with your regular rotation based on the judgement of your rage income. Unless you are getting slammed with AoE damage or you have excellent gear or unnaturally high hit and haste, you probably won’t be able to use Heroic Strike on every swing. Knowing which swings to hit them on in differing periods of your rotation and by how much rage you have in store is crucial to rage management and correct DPS rotation. You will „bank“ rage based on where your BT and WW cooldowns are. If you are banking rage, you are not hitting Heroic Strike on a swing in attempt to get your rage to a certain level so that you are guaranteed to have enough rage to hit both BT and WW (and maybe Slam after) in succession even if your next off-hand attack missed, not giving you any rage.
For example, if you were at 23 rage and your BT and WW cooldowns were almost ready, you would not use Heroic Strike in an attempt to get you enough rage to pay for those abilities. If you used Heroic Strike putting you down to 11 rage, and your offhand missed for example, you would be pushing back your abilities until you got that rage to pay. This is a very serious and common mistake and it is a DPS killer if repeated often. Another example would be when you just completed hitting BT and WW and they are cooling down. BT will be back up in 4s so you would not have to worry about banking rage so much until before then, due to your offhand swinging one or two times. The Heroic Strike glyph is so beautiful in that the more often you crit, the less you have to worry about rage banking because your Heroic crits make banking and rage management in general very forgiving.
[top]Optional Rage Management Talents
The effects of Anger Management, Improved Berserker Rage, and Unbridled Wrath allow you some additional freedom in your rage management. They can provide you with additional rage for Heroic Strike usage as long as you are not Heroic Striking at 100% already and also sometimes allow you use of your instant attacks in some situations where you would not have been able to. When deciding which of the optional talents to take, it is useful to know the comparison of the talents’ yields on a per-point-basis.
| Rage per Minute |
|---|
| Talent Points AM IBR (max) UW (base) 120(30)(3)x2 2-(60)(6)x2 3–(9)x2 4–(12)x2 5–(15)x2 |
As can be seen, Improved Berserker Rage gives you the most rage per minute per talent point, but at the same time requires a global cooldown to be spent. This means that in a typical situation, its rage per minute will be lower as your will not want to mess up your rotation just using Berserker Rage. Its actual rage per minute gain is therefore more likely in the region of 20 to 25 per talent point. Note also that having all of its rage on demand to recover from low rage situations will further increase the talent’s value. Anger Management comes in second but is a passive talent which can be good as it doesn’t require any of your attention or global cooldowns, but can also be less useful as the rage is not delivered on demand and some of the ticks may be wasted if you are spiking to 100 rage. Unbridled Wrath has the least value although its worth can increase with increased attack speed as the chance per hit for the rage gain is constant. Unfortunately, you can never have enough increased attack speed to match Unbridled Wrath in rage per second per talent point with other rage talents. For details on proc mechanics see section 7.9.1.
[top]Understanding the Hit table
To make sense of all of the soft and hard caps when it comes to hit, crit, and expertise, one must understand how the hit table works in World of Warcraft for melee. There are seven differrent kinds of attacks a player can land onto a mob. These are crits, hits, glancing blows, misses, dodges, parries, and blocks. Blocks are irrelevant in this discussion, so they will be thrown out. Based on the mob’s level and various other factors, there is a table that is constructed of chances to land these attacks. Let’s assume that the game code randomizes a number between 1 and 10000 which is applied to a hit table to determine what happens in the combat log. Below is an example hit table describing how the game may determine what kind of strike will show up on the combat log. Let’s say the game rolled a 8973. Based on the example, he would have landed a regular hit.
| White Hit Type | /random | %Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Miss | 1-1700 | 17% |
| Dodge | 1701-2340 | 4.4% |
| Parry | 3341-4340 | 10% |
| Glancing Blow | 4341-6740 | 24% |
| Crit | 6741-8240 | 15% |
| Hit | 8241-10000 | 18.6% |
A hit table is based on priorities, that is certain hit types have precedence over others, and there is only room for a total of 100% chance of attacks. Avoidance type blows (misses, dodges, and parries) have priority over all other types of blows. Whatever percent chance (if any at all) is left, is assigned to crits and regular hits depending on if it is a white or yellow melee attack.
[top]Standing behind your target
Mobs cannot parry attacks that come from behind their 180 degree facing. That is why it is very important as a melee class to stand behind the mob. Doing this completely removes the mob’s parry chance and increases your DPS. It also prevents the mob’s melee swings from gaining parry-haste from your parried attacks. When a parry occurs, the target that parried the attack has a chance of having their current swing hasted, as follows:
- If the next attack would normally occur within 20% of the swing speed after the parry, there is no effect.
- If the next attack would normally occur between 20% and 60% of the swing speed later, it happens 20% of the swing speed later instead.
- If the next attack would normally occur more than 60% of the swing speed later, the time until the next swing is reduced by 40% of the swing speed.
Mobs can have a parry-haste switch which is either on or off depending on what Blizzard sets it to at the given state of balance. Depending on the encounter, most hard-hitting melee bosses have parry haste switched to off, however you should still be behind the target if at all possible.
[top]White Table and Single-Roll
Normal melee or „white“ hits have different rules than special „yellow“ attacks. White attacks can glance, and have a single roll system for determining crits. For these attacks, critical strikes take priority over regular hits on the hit table. Also, white attacks can be affected by nasty glancing blows. A glancing blow is a normal hit with a percentage reduction. This percentage reduction and percent chance can differ based on the level difference between you and the mob. The percentage chance is fixed based on the level difference, however the percentage reduction is a range. The tables below show these values. Remember, %Applied=1-%Reduced. Glancing blows can only occur on normal melee swings, not specials.
| Mob Level | %Applied | %Chance |
|---|---|---|
| 83/Boss | 65%-85% | 24% |
| 82 | 75%-95% | 20% |
| 81 | 91%-99% | 15% |
| 80 | 91%-99% | 10% |
The base miss rate for white attacks while dual-wielding can also differ depending on the level of the mob you are trying to hit.
| Mob Level | %Miss |
|---|---|
| 83/Boss | 27% |
| 82 | 25% |
| 81 | 24.5% |
| 80 | 24% |
The base dodge rate for white attacks can also differ depending on the level of the mob you are trying to hit.
| Mob Level | %Dodge |
|---|---|
| 83/Boss | 6.5% |
| 82 | 5.4% |
| 81 | 5.2% |
| 80 | 5% |
Also, depending on the level of the mob, there is a certain amount of reduction in crit chance.
| Mob Level | %Crit Reduction |
|---|---|
| 83/Boss | 4.8% |
| 82 | .4% |
| 81 | .2% |
From all of this information, a full hit table can be created from any scenario. Let’s take a warrior with 3% anti-dodge, 12% to hit, and 40% crit rating attacking a boss mob from the back and show his hit table for white attacks:
| White Hit Type | %Chance |
|---|---|
| Miss | 15% |
| Dodge | 3.5% |
| Glancing Blow | 24% |
| Crit | 35.2% |
| Hit | 22.3% |
[top]Yellow table and Two-Roll
When you go to strike a mob with a special melee attack, the hit table rules are different than white attacks. The crit reduction and dodge rates are the same, however yellow strikes cannot glance and have different base miss rates. The miss rates assume the non-dual wielding values.
| Mob Level | %Miss |
|---|---|
| 83/Boss | 8% |
| 82 | 6% |
| 81 | 5.5% |
| 80 | 5% |
Normal white melee attacks use the single roll system for crits, while yellow special melee attacks use a two roll system for crits. The two roll system determines the chance to crit after the chance to hit is determined. Once the chance to hit is determined, then both the crit chance and the leftover hit chance spawns from that determination. For example, Let’s take a warrior with 0% anti-dodge, 0% to hit, and 60% crit rating fighting a boss from behind.
| Base | Remaining | Final |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow Hit Type %Chance Miss8%Dodge6.5%Remaining85.5% | Yellow Hit Type %Chance Crit85.5%*(60%-4.8%)Hit85.5%*(40%+4.8%) | Yellow Hit Type %Chance Miss8%Dodge6.5%Crit47.20%Hit38.30% |
As you can see the reduction in crit rate for the special ability is very noticable without the proper avoidance reduction from hit and expertise. This aids in making hit and expertise powerful stats as they are able to beat the negative effects that the hit table places on your crit rate.
[top]Effect of Heroic Strike
When you use Heroic Strike, it turns your next main hand white ability into a yellow one. Therefore, instead of your normal melee attacks using the single-roll white table, they use the two-roll yellow table. This removes the glancing blow chance, reduces the base miss rate, and increases the crit bonus damage of the swing if it were to crit via the Impale talent. Heroic strike also adds 495 damage to the swing. Turning these white swings into more powerful yellow swings is a very solid boost in dps, however the rage cost of doing this is high.
[top]The white crit cap
It is possible that if your crit rate is too high and if you do not have sufficient anti-avoidance (expertise and hit) that there will not be enough room on the white, single-roll hit table for all of your critical strike chance. Since dodges, misses, and glances have priority over your crit rate, the hit table will have to consume part of crit rate to fit the more important aviodance and glancing. Imagine if you had a 60% crit rate versus a boss target, but had no hit rating or anti dodge. The 6.5% from dodge. 27% from miss, and 24% from glance is placed into the table first, and only leaves 42.5% of room. Instead of 60% crit rate then, your white crit rate would only be 42.5%. Each percentage of anti-avoidance you add into your stat pool essentially lifts this choke on your white crit rate.
It is possible at high gear and buff levels that this trend can occur, simply due to the fact that hit rating will not be as desirable after the yellow hit cap is reached. It is common for people to shoot for other kinds of stats other than hit rating, and can potentially run into this problem if they are not aware of it. A common gear setup with full anti-dodge, and 8% to hit will have the following white crit cap on a boss:
| White hit type | percentage |
|---|---|
| Dodge | 0% |
| Miss | 19% |
| Glancing | 24% |
| Crit Ceiling | **57%+4.8% |
**the 4.8% is added since it will be reduced via crit reduction.
So in a sense, a player with over 61.8% crit will not be able to support the overage on their white attacks without sufficient hit rating to overcome that cap. That being said, once you have realized that you have reached this cap, it is beneficial to supplement the amount of crit overage with hit rating, so that any additional crit rating upgrades are not watered down by this phenomenon.
[top]Damage Breakdown and Ability Scaling
Now that the mechanics of the combat system, ability rotations, and talent definitions are very clear, a quantification of the total output or damage breakdown can be made. Damage comes from five primary sources which are prevelent in all playstyles and normal rotation, and a few secondary sources which may vary. The primary sources are Melee and Heroic Strike, Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, Slam, and Deep Wounds. Secondary sources are Execute, Rend, and possibly direct damage procs. Sources of damage will scale differently and some may have a defined AP scalar which can be used to compare the degree of scaling with AP which we will denote as „sAP.“ Briefly listed also will be how differing types of stats may scale the damage source which will help generalize further how our damage delivery scales with gear.
[top]Heroic Strike and White attacks
The largest portion of your damage comes from white melee attacks blanketed by a portion of them being Heroic Strikes. Leftover rage after rotation can be transformed into a rate at which we can make our melee strikes more powerful. Heroic Strike has two main components and a rate of delivery. The first component is the bonus damage it delivers, which is 495 at rank 13. The second component comprises of all the differences between a Heroic Strike and a regular melee strike. These two components can be added together when we seek to realize numerically what Heroic Strike is doing. The rate at which main hand melee strikes can be converted is defined as Heroic Strike Frequency or „HSF“ and needs to be calculated first so that we can know not only how often Heroics are being delivered, but also the remaining rate at which normal main hand melee attacks are leftover.
Your heroic strike frequency (HSF) is a very special rate which can differ greatly based on the actual rage generation and rotational use of a player. The difference in DPS between a rate of 0% and a rate of 100% in both theoretical and actual practice is quite substantial, so a player who can achieve a high Heroic Strike turnover rate will see a significant boost to their damage output. The kicker here is that if your HSF increases, your RPS (rage per second) decreases due to the fact that you are using 12 rage plus sacrificing the rage gained from the main hand attack that you are turning over. This makes HSF very gear/buff dependent and makes actual calculation of HSF difficult. A good spreadsheet can accurately model your HSF by means of iterative calculations and reach an equilibrium fairly quickly. To model this, we must take our expressions from rage generation and then subtract from that our rage needed to keep the rotation to arrive at RPS dedicated to Heroic Strike. From this, we divide that by the total cost of a Heroic Strike to arrive at a rate per second of Heroic Strike delivery. To get HSF, we multiply this per second rate to the average attack speed of the main hand weapon. Below is a unit expression that verifies that HSF will be in the correct units:
Means that when we multiply Heroics per second with average main hand attack speed, we get a value in units of Heroic Strikes per attack. If this value is above 1, then it’s safe to say that you can Heroic Strike on every main hand attack and you will have excess rage flow that you can’t do anything with. If it is less than 1, then you can only Heroic Strike a portion of your main hand attacks. This is also affected further by periodic avoidance and rage starvation which I won’t dive into to emphasize the key idea being explained. Below is a very simplified way to get your HSF without extraneous factors such as yellow table avoidance or periodic rage starvation.
where MHAtkSpd is the average attack speed in the main hand
and RPS is the total rage per second income calculated in section 4.1
and RotRPS is the needed rage per second to upkeep rotation
and MHGain is the average rage gain from the main hand
and 12 is the base cost of a Heroic Strike
Note the counterbalancing effect that a faster attack speed (when you attack faster MHAtkSpd gets lower) has. In general, the RPS factor (which in itself has an inverse attack speed in it) has more weight in the expression and will scale HSF upward with an increase in gear and even haste. You get an increase in HSF with an increase in attack speed due to the fact that you are generating more rage in the off hand and in the main hand attacks you aren’t using to Heroic Strike with. To calculate total DPS from Heroic Strike, consider the following expression:
where HSF is heroic strike frequency
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and C is the special crit rate for the main hand if any
and B is the special crit bonus for represented hand, 1.272
and D is the dodge chance for the main hand if any
and M is the special miss chance for the main hand if any
and AP is the average attack power of the player
and WDPS is the main hand weapon’s damage range listed in the tooltip
and WSpd is the main hand weapon’s speed listed in the tooltip
and MHAtkSpd is the average attack speed the main hand is swinging at
White damage is done at periodic intervals to your current attack speed on two different tracks, minus the amount of Heroic Strikes dealt in the main hand. The damage dealt is equal to all components of a melee swing: weapon damage, attack power damage, and crit bonus, which are all modified by other rates such as armor reduction, glancing, misses, etc. Since all of the mechanics are known, an expression can be generated that signifies the DPS done by each swing in each hand, and successively the DPS done by each hand, and in combination the DPS done by all melee swings. With HSF, we can determine how often we don’t Heroic Strike in the main hand. This is simply 1-HSF and is called NoHSF. Both values cannot be greater than 1 or less than 0. Some expressions are as follows:
and DA is the percentage damage applied to a target after considering armor reduction which is equal to
and C is the crit chance for represented hand
and B is the crit bonus for represented hand, 1.06
and D is the dodge chance for represented hand
and M is the white miss chance for represented hand
and G is the glance chance, which is .24 for bosses
and r is the reduction factor for glances, which is .25 on average for bosses
and 1.06 is the multiplier for two-handed weapon spec
and 0.625 is the multiplier for off-hand attacks
and AP is total average attack power
and WDPS is the respective hand’s weapon DPS listed in its tooltip
and WSpd is the respective hand’s weapon speed listed in its tooltip
and AtkSpd is the respective hand’s average attack speed after effects of haste, flurry, or other applicable buffs
and DIM is the total amount of periodic/average multipliers such as deathwish or hysteria if you wish to consider it
And finally…
Depending on your rage generation and subsequently HSF, white attacks and Heroic Strikes can trade places with eachother in importance on a DPS meter such as recount. HSF can differ not only on rage generation, but skill of the player when managing rage, and perfect play-impairing encounters which may involve movement or other things. HSF is never absolute between encounters or general randomness, so it is important to realize that this will greatly impact the variability of your perceived DPS and damage breakdowns.
When discussing rage starvation due to avoidance streaks, HSF can also be used to compare the RPS contribution of both main and off-hands. If your HSF is high, then your off hand will be majoratively producing your rage. If your HSF is 1, then your off-hand will be producing all of your rage. If your HSF is around 0.375 and your attack speeds are the same, then your MH and OH will be producing evenly. Either way, there is a statistical chance based on this comparison that you will miss 2, 3, or 4+ times in a row on these rage building white attacks. These chances will constitute rage starvation where you will reactively stop Heroic Striking and possibly miss a rotational ability. With these statistical chances, we can compute an estimated factor which negatively effects the rate at which we use Heroic Strike and how tight our DPS rotation is. It’s not entirely clear how to correctly estimate the effect of this on our rotations or Heroic Strike use, partly because you can’t model human behavior. However, decently accurate estimations can be made. This effect of random rage starvation can be reduced by adding anti-avoidance stats such as hit rating. If you are the type who fears randomness, then you may be a type of Warrior who prefers items of similar power with hit rating than items without. An example could be wearing [Surge Needle Ring] over [Ring of Invincibility] or [Bracers of Unrelenting Attack] over [Sinner’s Bindings] or [Spinning Fate] over [Final Voyage] just because one of them has hit rating.
| Differing stat effects on Heroic Strike and Melee Damage |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size of melee and heroic strikes, increases HSF, sAP=0.1107*WepSpd yet is increased/decreased by other factors and statscritIncreases rate of crit bonus damage and deep wounds delivery, increases HSFhitReduces avoidance rate of white attacks, reduces avoidance of heroic strike under cap, increases HSF, reduces statistical chance of rage starvationhasteIncreases frequency of white attacks, increases HSF, increases delivery of heroic strike bonus damage when HSF > 1ArPIncreases the total size of melee and heroic strikes, increases HSFExpertiseReduces avoidance rate of melee and heroic strikes under cap, increases HSF under cap, reduces statistical chance of rage starvation under cap |
[top]Bloodthirst
Bloodthirst representation can be upwards of around 25%. In a raid on a single target, Bloodthirst will have higher DPS contribution than Whirlwind. There are some times where they can be generally even or Bloodthirst behind Whirlwind on multi-target fights. In section 3.3.1 it was explained how to quantify the value of Bloodthirst’s strike. In a best repeatable (versus best decisional) rotation we use bloodthirst twice every 8-9 seconds. In the rotational basis this ability has the highest opportunity cost to delay due to it’s relationship with Whirlwind in the rotational basis. Bloodthirst can provide „on hit“ proc triggers (including Bloodsurge) on connects. Also, Bloodthirst can provide Deep Wounds on their crits. Due to Bloodthirst’s very high sAP, it can get very high compared to other abilities when many procs are stacked together such as Berserkings and trinkets, which also partly explains why it contributes a much higher percentage of total DPS in single target raid situations compared to other instant abilities.
| Differing stat effects on Bloodthirst |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size of Bloodthirst, sAP=0.5247critIncreases rate of impaled crit bonus and DWounds deliveryhitReduces avoidance under yellow capArPIncreases the total sizeExpertiseReduces avoidance rate under cap |
[top]Whirlwind
While Whirlwind is our strongest on use ability, its larger cooldown than Bloodthirst puts its damage and scaling contribution behind Bloodthirst usually in a raid. Normally you will see Whirlwind behind Bloodthirst several percent on the meter. However when in AoE situations, Whirlwind may provide more damage contribution due to it hitting for up to 4 times its regular damage. In raids we are concerned with the single target output we can provide, so we concentrate on Whirlwind’s output there. In the rotation section of this article in section 3.3.2 it was explained how to quantify the value of Whirlwind’s strike. In the rotational basis we use Whirlwind everytime it comes off cooldown every 8 seconds glyphed, getting the DPS of Whirlwind being WhirlwindStrike damage divided by eight.
Whirlwind can provide „on hit“ proc triggers (only 1 chance for Bloodsurge per WW main hand) on both weapon connects. If you are using Whirlwind in an AoE situation, the chance of getting a Bloodsurge proc is greater with Whirlwind than not in an AoE situation. Also, Whirlwind can provide Deep Wounds in two different ways which was discussed also in section 3.3.2. The chance of getting a Deep Wounds from Whirlwind is greater than the chance of getting a Deep Wounds from other instant abilities because there are two chances in every strike.
| Differing stat effects on Whirlwind |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size of Whirlwind, sAP=0.4823critIncreases rate of impaled crit bonus and DWounds deliveryhitReduces avoidance under yellow capArPIncreases the total sizeExpertiseReduces avoidance rate under cap |
[top]Deep Wounds
Deep Wounds does damage every second on the second after the last critical attack. Each time there is a new critical attack, the timer resets and the previous „undone“ damage is piled into a buffer. Deep Wounds damage does 1/6 of its buffer every time it is allowed to tick. For each crit, 48% of your average weapon damage range (the one that is displayed in the paper doll in the game) is placed into this buffer and the tick cycle resets. DWounds should do around 18% of your overall damage, depending on crit rate and damage range.
There are a lot of common misconceptions and misunderstandings about how DWounds actually works. A lot of players make the mistake in thinking that the higher the ticks become the more damage DWounds actually does, and that having the large stack fall off is a DPS loss. This notion is incorrect, and I will explain why. The reason why a Deep Wound tick gets large in size is due to the buffer being fed into a large amount. This occurs when you get crits back to back with fewer than 1 second in between. This prevents any ticks from occuring and allows the buffer to be fed. The higher the buffer, the higher the tick. However, if the buffer is increasing in size over time with new crits, this means that ticks are occuring less frequently. If the ticks are large they are happening less often. If the ticks are small, they are happening more frequently. No matter what, if you crit, the DWounds damage for that particular crit will occur whether it is 1 second from the time of crit or 20 seconds from the time of crit for the same damage.
Here’s an example. Let’s assume your average damage range is 2083.3333… Therefore, everytime you crit, 1000 damage is placed in the buffer. Below is a table of timestamps of a possible scenario involving Deep Wounds, and what ticks will occur.
| time | event | buffer size | tick size |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | crit | 1000 | |
| 0.46 | crit | 2000 | |
| 1.46 | tick | 1667 | 333 |
| 1.54 | crit | 2667 | |
| 1.87 | crit | 3667 | |
| 2.78 | crit | 4667 | |
| 3.78 | tick | 3889 | 778 |
| 4.78 | tick | 3111 | 778 |
| 5.78 | tick | 2333 | 778 |
| 5.99 | crit | 3333 | |
| 6.99 | tick | 2778 | 555 |
| 7.99 | tick | 2222 | 556 |
| 8.99 | tick | 1667 | 555 |
| 9.99 | tick | 1111 | 556 |
| 10.99 | tick | 556 | 555 |
| 11.99 | tick | 0 | 556 |
Note that there were 6 crits, which means that 6000 damage should have been dealt. If you add up all of the tick sizes on the table, you get 6000. Tick size became high due to critting more than once within the same second multiple times. No damage was gained or lost due to this, either. The only potential loss of DWounds damage can occur at the target’s death or immunity to damage. Say for example, the target dies at time 10.5, 1111 DWounds damage is lost. Any undone damage that is still in the buffer at the point of target death or immunity will not be dealt and will dissapear, causing a slight potential DPS loss. So in theory, at the end of the fight the smaller the buffer the less damage will be wasted. This affects crit rate and haste in a somewhat minor and negative fashion when considering DWounds based on the length of the fight with the target.
There is a mostly untested phenomenon that reduces Deep Wounds‘ damage and is called munching. Basically what happens is, if a player crits in succession within a minute amount of time, the previous message to the server to send damage into the DWounds buffer will be ignored due to the very new request. It is not very certain what exactly the thresholds are for this, but it is confirmed that double Whirlwind crits cause this 100% of the time. Same-speed weapons can also be synced due to restarting your auto attack and may crit simultaneously. Special abilities can also sometimes crit semi-simultaneously with swung melee attacks. DWounds damage in game is therefore slightly lower than theoretical damage. DWounds is also not affected by damage reductions from armor.
| Differing stat effects on DWounds |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size of damage input into buffer, sAP=0.0327*WepSpd yet is affected by other statscritIncreases rate of deliveryhasteIncreases rate of deliveryhitIncreases rate of delivery if under special cap and delivery via white attacksexpertiseIncreases rate of delivery if under dodge cap |
[top]Bloodsurge Slam
Slam damage is usually proportional to attacks per second from Heroics, Whirlwind, and Bloodthirst, and also the skill and global use of the player. Slam representation can range anywhere between 5 and 11 percent of overall damage based on all of these factors. A fraction of all Bloodsurge procs are unspent per fight due to GCD crowding, player choice, overlapping, or fight mechanics.
| Differing stat effects on Slam |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size, sAP=0.0750*WepSpd yet is affected by other statscritIncreases rate of impaled crit bonus and DWounds deliveryhitReduces avoidance under yellow caphasteIncreases proc rate due to increased HSF through rage, atk speedArPIncreases the total sizeExpertiseReduces avoidance rate under cap |
[top]Execute
Since Execute can only be used once the mob reaches less than 20%, it’s representation is very low. It’s function is to moderately increase rotation damage during this time. Execute is weaved into the rotation behind Bloodthirst and Whirlwind, and sometimes behind Slam. Lots of extra rage per second is needed to allow the use of Execute, and using it significantly reduces Heroic Strike damage. Generally most of the rage per second after rotation is ported from Herioc Strikes to execute at this time. Rank 9 deals 1456 base damage, plus 38 for any extra rage point over the cost (15, 13, or 10 depending on talent choice) for up to 15, 17, or 20 extra rage over cost, as it can only use up to 30 of your rage per. Players can also boost extra base damage by 10 rage by using the glyph. 20% of your AP is added on as damage to the base damage of Execute, allowing it to scale. Execute scales faster with rage per second gains, so no special attention to AP/STR should be looked at for this ability.
Depending on how much it is used, Execute should show up for 3% to 6% of overall damage after a long fight is completed.
| Differing stat effects on Execute |
|---|
| Stat Effect APIncreases the total size, sAP=0.1908, also allows more rage per second to be usedcritIncreases rate of impaled crit bonus and DWounds delivery, also allows more rage per second to be usedhitReduces avoidance under yellow cap, also allows more rage per second to be usedhasteIncreases damage through HSF through rage, attack speed, also allows more rage per second to be usedArPIncreases the total size, also allows more rage per second to be usedExpertiseReduces avoidance rate under cap |
[top]Other damage
If you have a Direct Damage Proc trinket such as [Bandit’s Insignia] they cast an instant spell that deals a certain amount of damage every 45 seconds or more. The better your gear is, the smaller representation these kinds of things have. They only scale with DIM’s and crit chance from rating and not agility. This kind of damage will only be 0.5% to 1.5% of total damage, depending on gear level.
Some players might use Rend as their first global cooldown at the start of the fight (since it deals 35% extra damage to mobs greater than 75% health) before switching to Berserker Stance. It deals 76 base plus 20% average weapon damage every 3 seconds, 5 times. It only scales with AP the same way weapon damage does. Note that this effect is also increased by 30% from the Trauma or Mangle debuffs and another 20% via the 2/2 Improved Rend talent. Also, some advanced players might use Rend in their rotations in absences of Bloodsurge procs after their 2nd BT in the rotational basis. As said before, using Rend this way will show around 2.5% of overall DPS representation with the Rend glyph, and around 1.75% of overall DPS representation without the glyph. Rend is not affected by damage reduction from armor.
If you are lucky enough to obtain a [Shadowmourne] it also has a direct damage component which strikes for 2000 damage on average every 23 seconds or so.
[top]Flurry and its Mechanics
Flurry is a buff that is placed on your character that gives you a hasted attack speed which is multiplicative with haste rating, Heroism/Bloodlust, other haste effects, and the like in the form of:
Flurry only occurs or refreshes after you have landed a critical strike with any attack. The buff is removed when you have attempted three consecutive auto attacks or heroic strikes including the offhand without landing a critical strike on any attack, swung or instant during that period. For example, if you were to crit a Bloodthirst, the buff would activate and if you have had no crits during your next three auto swings, then it will go away. Using this information, one can compute the probability uptime of the Flurry buff to incorporate in other calculation of Fury Warrior mechanics.
We label this value Flurry Uptime. Flurry is a very important buff to keep active while DPSing as it increases our DPS and rage generation greatly, so it is important to have a high Flurry uptime value. Flurry uptime can never be 100% unless you have 100% chance to crit, which not possible unless you have received some kind of gimmick buff. Calculating Flurry uptime takes into consideration your chance to not crit, and the difference between your attack speeds and your instant attack rates. Not critting auto attacks or Heroics will reduce your uptime, while critting your auto attacks, Heroic Strikes, and instant attacks will increase it. It is more natural to find the loss in Flurry uptime using simple statistical calculations and subtracting it from 1 to get the portion it is active.
To successfully „cannibalize“ a Flurry charge we have to not crit any of our attacks. To fully remove the buff, we must swing three times in a row with an autoattack or Heroic Strike without critting or any of our instants critting. Many initial values must be found before the final compilation can be made. First is average time to consume an average Flurry charge. We make an assumption that we are already flurried when needing to know the longest time a full Flurry will be up.
where IASeffects are the total increased attack speed multipliers from haste rating, speed effects, etc.
and MH/OH WSpd are the base speeds of your weapons
Next is main hand and off hand swing ratios. We need this because if at any time your weapon speeds differ or if you have different crit chances in either hand or have a heroic strike frequency less than 100% then we need to know which hand can consume more charge and by how much. We must find the fractional percent of total swings each hand contributes to the whole. Using the basis of the main hand, you get MHWSpd/OHWSpd main hand attacks per off hand attack.
Generally, if your main hand is a slower speed than your off hand, then your off hand will have a higher percent contribution of swings, and vise-versa. Using these values in combination with special attack rates, we can compile Flurry downtime. Again, Flurry downtime is the product of all the chances to not crit with every ability during the given time the Flurry buff is up.
Using algebra, multiplying unique values with itself is equivalent to raising it to the power of how many times it is multiplied with itself. For example, say your chance to crit with Bloodthirst is 45%, and on average you attempt 0.7 Bloodthirsts in the time to consume the flurry, then (1-0.55)^(0.7) would be equal to the chance to not crit Bloodthirst. We then individually tabulate each chance for each attack type and multiply them all together to arrive at Flurry downtime.
Chances to not crit various abilities within Tconsume:
Main Hand White:
Heroic Strike:
Off Hand White:
Whirlwind:
Bloodthirst:
Slam:
where wCrit% is your white crit chance
and yCrit% is your yellow crit chance
and HSF is your heroic strike frequency
and NoHSF is 1-HSF
and BT, WW, Slam persec are your various special attack rates
and Tconsume, OH%, and MH% are previously defined in this section
All of these chances are multiplied together to arrive at Flurry downtime, and Flurry uptime is the difference between that and 100%.
If you increase your crit rate via raid buffs or gear, then you will see an increase in your Flurry uptime, however it does have diminishing returns as Flurry uptime increases. Flurry uptime can never reach 100% unless your crit chance is near 100%, however it is quite acceptable to reach value of 95% and higher with good gear. Increasing your swing rate through haste or other effects has a slight reducing effect to Flurry uptime due to decreasing the Tconsume value and its relation to the special attack chances to not crit.
4 swings theory – The synced weapons scenario
If you are able to sync your weapons by resetting your autoswings on a target, in theory the game will not be able to differentiate between the 3rd or 4th attack when consuming the Flurry charge. Your 4th attack occurs at the same time as your 3rd attack, effectively giving you 4 swings per Flurry charge. This only changes the Tconsume formula.
Becones…
Since Tconsume increases, the opportunity to crit an instant attack and refresh the Flurry lengthens. This slightly increases your Flurry uptime. The gain from this is contested to be weaker in WotLK due to the the slower 2H main hand weapons compared to the faster 1H main hand weapons in previous expansions. It is also contested that having staggered weapon swings is better due to less spikier rage generation, which results in a general increase in HSF.
[top]General Gearing Strategy
Warriors are very often cited to be the most gear-dependant class for DPS in the game. Be that as it may, gearing your character correctly is of paramount importance to your success and is part of what is considered to be a player’s „skill.“ Simply comparing the points attributed to an item’s stats is usually not the best for determining the most powerful gearset. It is also not best to attribute a certain static weight to a stat that will determine an given item’s worth. Rather, the worth of a specific piece of gear depends a lot on the Warrior’s stats or on his current gear and raid buff/debuff situation. It therefore changes periodically depending on differing situations and especially with new tiers of progression.
For determining the best equipment for your character, it is therefore best to use flexible tools that take into account your character’s current gear and spec as well as the availability or lack of buffs and debuffs during your regular raid sessions. As an example for such a tool, you will find Landsoul’s Warrior Spread Sheet here. There are quite a few other tools out there which may help you, with varying accuracy, in making the right gearing decisions.
[top]The Importance of your Attack Power
Your attack power is the basis for determining the power of your strikes. The more AP, the harder you hit. Any other gear stat (apart from weapon base damage) only builds upon the damage your strikes already cause. A critical strike doubling your strike damage depends in power on damage of the strike which is determined by your AP. 30% haste increases the frequency of your attacks whose power is determined by AP. Armor penetration lets your attacks ignore your opponent’s armor, letting your attacks hit for more as they should have before armor, which depends on AP. Your attack power therefore is a major factor in determining your damage potential. Its power influences and is influenced by every single other stat. In order for your other stats and buffs to be strong, you must have a sufficient basis of attack power that is associated with your strikes.
[top]Explanation of differing stat gains and conversions at 80
In order to understand how the different item stats influence your damage, it is necessary to understand what each stat does. Gains in a specific stat very often have additional effects to the one jumping to mind. Please note that the rating conversions given below are for level 80 only.
[top]Strength
One point of strength gives you 2 points of attack power. However, due to Improved Berserker Stance, the amount of strength you gain is increased by 20%, and due to Blessing of Kings, is further increased by 10% for a total modifier of 1.32. Due to this modification, strength is used for increasing the basis of our attack power rather than straight attack power. Point for point, 1 strength will always be better than 2 attack power.
Also, for every 2 points in strength gets 1 block value for your shield, if you were in ever a situation where you needed to block or Shield Slam. If you had 1800 strength and your shield blocked 200 damage, then your normal blocks would be 1100 and your Shield Block blocks would be 2200, which can be quite substantial in a defensive situation.
abbr. STR
[top]Attack Power
Attack Power is the basis of the size of all your attacks. The more AP you have, the harder every strike hits. Attack power increases the DPS of your main hand and off hand damage ranges, the direct damage of normalized weapon-based special attacks, and the direct damage of straight AP-modified attacks. For every 14 attack power, the damage range of your weapons is increased (before other modifications) by 1 DPS.
abbr. AP
[top]Agility
Agility increases your chance to critically hit an opponent, just like critical strike rating does but with a different conversion. For every 62.50 points of agility, your critical strike chance is increased by 1%. Unlike rogues, hunters and shamans, warriors do not directly gain AP from agility. However, 1 point of agility gives you 2 points of armor. Armored to the Teeth (3 talent points) gives you 1 AP for every 36 points of armor. 18 points of agility therefore gives you 1 AP.
Agility also increases your chance to dodge attacks which can help somewhat in survival situations. 86.86 points of agility will increase your chance to dodge attacks by 1%.
abbr. AGI
[top]Critical Strike Rating
Critical strike rating increases your chance to critically hit an opponent. You need 45.91 points of critical strike rating for a 1% increase in critical strike chance. Your critical strikes have a basic damage bonus of 100%. A critical strike therefore deals double damage. This is further increased by the talent Impale and by the critical strike bonus damage from your meta gem. For details on this, see section 2.1.2.
Each of your critical strikes procs the effect of Flurry. An increase in critical strike chance therefore also increases your Flurry uptime. For a detailed description of Flurry’s effects and its uptime see section 6.8.
Critical strike chance also directly influences your rate of applying Deep Wounds. For a detailed explanation of Deep Wounds‘ effects, see section 6.4.
Critical strike chance also increases the uptime of some trinket and set bonus procs. An example would include the 2-set bonus of tier 8 which has no internal cooldown, meaning its uptime is directly porportional to your crit chance. A proc with an internal cooldown, such as [Blood of the Old God], will have a quicker re-proc time after its ICD finishes the higher your crit chance is. For a detailed explanation of proc rates and uptimes, see ***link***.
abbr. crit rating
[top]Hit Rating
Your hit rating decreases your chance to miss a target with your attacks and abilities. For every 32.79 points of hit rating, your chance to miss with your attacks is reduced by 1%. Hit rating reduces the miss chance of both white and yellow hit tables simultaneously. After the miss chance of the yellow table reaches 0%, hit rating continues to remove miss chance of the white table. The hit table is explained in section 5.
If you still have yellow table miss chance, hit rating increases the effectiveness of your critical strike chance due to the two-roll system that is used. This is discussed in section 5.3.
For white attacks, hit rating increases the Crit Cap. This is discussed in section 5.5.
Hit rating also helps to smooth your rage generation. With a 27% chance to miss with your rage-generating attacks and the slow attack speed that usually comes with wielding two-handed weapons, a miss in between attacks can sometimes leave you without the rage that you need for some time, thereby preventing your from using a certain special attack for that period. Additional hit rating helps smooth out these gaps. It also helps reduce the chance to miss more than one hit in a row which can have a serious impact on your rotation. At 8% hit you still have a 19% chance to miss. Your chance to miss two times in a row is 3.61%, three times in a row 0.686%, and four times in a row 0.013%. These chances might look small, but over the long durations of a raid night they do exist and will mess up your rotation, especially if you are a bit too generous with Heroic Strike usage.
The rage you receive from missing fewer off hand white attacks can also help you in achieving a near 100% heroic strike frequency. Heroic strike frequency is discussed in section 6.1.
Hit chance also increases the uptime of some trinket, enchant, and set bonus procs. An example would include the Berserking enchant which has no internal cooldown, meaning its uptime is directly porportional to your successful attack rate. A proc with an internal cooldown, such as [Darkmoon Card: Greatness], will have a quicker average re-proc time after its ICD finishes the smaller your miss chance is.
[top]Haste Rating
Haste rating increases the rate of your auto melee attacks. For every 32.79 points of haste rating, your attack rate is increased by 1%. Contrary to a common misconception, this does not decrease your swing timer by the hasted percentage but rather increases the frequency of your strikes. Consequently, with 20% haste, you cannot simply take 20% off your swing speed to calculate its effects. Rather, you are performing 20% more swings in the same amount of time, effectively granting you a swing speed reduction of 16.67%. The exact formula for swing speed reduction can be seen in section 8.2.
Unlike for casters, haste rating does not decrease your GCD.
With an increased number of attacks over the same period of time, your rage income arrives faster. This can help with your heroic strike frequency. Not only this, but with an increased number of main hand attacks comes an additional number of opportunities to queue Heroic Strikes. However, please note that this will have an effect only if you are at or near 100% heroic strike frequency. If you are not, your Heroic Strike usage is usually not limited by your strike frequency but rather by your rage income.
Increased attack speed also helps re-proccing your proc-based effects that are subject to internal cooldowns. It can also increase the uptime of procs that are not ICD-limited, even if the proc chance is determined on a PPM-basis which is discussed in section 7.9.1.
[top]Expertise Rating
Expertise rating reduces the chance an opponent will dodge or parry your attacks. For every 32.79 points of expertise rating, your opponent’s chance to dodge or parry your attacks is reduced by 1%. Please note that expertise rating actually increases your expertise points. 32.79 points of expertise rating grant you 4 points of expertise which in turn grants you a 1% dodge/parry reduction. As you should not stand in front of a mob, the parry reduction is irrelevant. The hit table is discussed in section 5.
If you still have yellow table dodge chance, expertise rating increases the effectiveness of your critical strike chance due to the two-roll system that is used. This system is detailed in section 5.3.
For white attacks, expertise rating increases the Crit Cap if there is still dodge chance on the table. This is detailed in section 5.5.
[top]Armor Penetration Rating
Armor Penetration Rating effectively increases the damage dealt by most of your attacks by reducing the damage reduction incurred from a target’s armor. Every 14 points of armor penetration rating grants you 1% armor penetration. This percentage reduction is not applied to your target’s total armor, but rather a part of it. Due to game balancing mechanics, a certain amount of a target’s armor cannot be affected by the reduction. The maximum affected armor that can be removed is referred to as the „ArP effectiveness cap“.
To better grasp these mechanics, it is useful to be aware of the following constants:
MobArmor – The mob’s armor is determined by its type and level. For a lvl 80 warrior mob, this value is 9729, for WotLK bosses it’s 10643.
DebuffedArmor – MobArmor modified by all armor decreasing effects from debuffs: Sunder Armor/Expose Armor, Faerie Fire, Shattering Throw
ArmorConstant – This is a fixed armor constant which is equivalent to 50% physical damage reduction. For the below calculation, this constant is based on the attacker’s (your) level and is 15232.5.
The ArP effectiveness cap is determined by the following formula:
If the ArP effectiveness cap is calculated as greater than DebuffedArmor, then the DebuffedArmor value is used as the ArP Effectiveness cap. For WotLK boss mobs with Sunder and Faerie Fire debuffs, the ArP effectiveness cap is therefore 7773.73. Your armor penetration percentage is applied against this number only. If your armor penetration percentage goes beyond 100%, any overage is wasted because you cannot remove more armor than the ArP effectiveness cap.
It should be noted that the value of ArP increases the more you already have on your gear due to slight exponential gains. When using an ArP-proc trinket, ArP’s value may go beyond that of strength as early as early Ulduar gear level, depending on the amount of ArP pieces in your gear.
To mathematically visualize the gains of armor penetration, below is shown step by step how gains from armor penetration are found. The following equations for percent damage applied (%DA) which is commonly used throughout this guide. First we take the calculation for damage reduction for armor, %DR, and algebraically rewrite it to get a usable formula for damage gain.
%DR = Armor / (Armor + 15232.5)
%DA = 1 – %DR = 1 – Armor / (Armor + 15232.5)
%DA = 15232.5 / (15232.5 + Armor)
%DA = 15232.5 / (15232.5 + (DebuffedArmor – ArPEffectivenessCap*ArP%))
%DA = 15232.5 / ((15232.5 + DebuffedArmor) – ArPEffectivenessCap*ArP%)
no debuffs:
DebuffedArmor = 10643
ArPEffectivenessCap = 8625.17
%DA = 15232.5 / (25875.5 – 8625.17*ArP%)
5 sunder armor:
DebuffedArmor = 10643*(1-0.2) = 8514.4
ArPEffectivenessCap = 7915.63
%DA = 15232.5 / (23746.9 – 7915.63*ArP%)
5 sunder armor, faerie fire:
DebuffedArmor = 10643*(1-0.2)*(1-0.05) = 8088.68
ArPEffectivenessCap = 7773.73
%DA = 15232.5 / (23321.18 – 7773.73*ArP%)
5 sunder armor, faerie fire, shattering throw:
DebuffedArmor = 10643*(1-0.2)*(1-0.05)*(1-0.2) = 6470.94
ArPEffectivenessCap = 7234.48 -> 6470.94
**In game there is a rule that limits the cap so that it does not exceed the debuffed armor level.
%DA = 15232.5 / (21703.44 – 6470.94*ArP%)
For each debuff situation, we can find gains in %damage dealt per armor penetration rating per current rating level. Please note that damage increase is measured from the previous point, not the initial point and it is slightly exponential in growth. Only 100% damage applied can be achieved with Shattering Throw. Here’s a plot graph which displays the curves:
Below is a chart which shows %increase in incriments of 140 (10%) rating to show the exponential gains of armor penetration.
| No debuffs | 5SA | 5SA, FF | 5SA, FF, Shatter |
|---|---|---|---|
| ArP rating %Damage App. %inc from prev. 1400.60903.4483%2800.63073.5714%4200.65413.7037%5600.67933.8462%7000.70644.0000%8400.73594.1667%9800.76784.3478%11200.80284.5455%12600.84104.7619%14000.88305.0000% | ArP rating %Damage App. %inc from prev. 1400.66363.4483%2800.68733.5714%4200.71273.7037%5600.74013.8462%7000.76974.0000%8400.80184.1667%9800.83674.3478%11200.87474.5455%12600.91644.7619%14000.96225.0000% | ArP rating %Damage App. %inc from prev. 1400.67573.4483%2800.69983.5714%4200.72573.7037%5600.75363.8462%7000.78384.0000%8400.81654.1667%9800.85194.3478%11200.89074.5455%12600.93314.7619%14000.97975.0000% | ArP rating %Damage App. %inc from prev. 1400.72343.0732%2800.74643.1706%4200.77083.2744%5600.79693.3853%7000.82483.5039%8400.85483.6311%9800.88703.7679%11200.92173.9155%12600.95924.0750%14001.00004.2481% |
As you can see, the percentage gain for each increment matches (calculations were true and free from rounding) for each set of debuffs except for Shattering Throw, which is lower. Also, it is clear that each increment has larger gain than the previous.
abbr. ArP
[top]Stamina
One point in stamina grants 10 base hit points. Stamina can be further increased by 10% with Blessing of Kings.
Stamina is not a DPS stat. It helps your survivability by granting you a larger health pool. In principle, being able to survive can make the difference between failure and success, especially on progression fights. However, your primary role is to provide DPS and you should not focus on getting your stamina high. Being a warrior and wearing plate gear already provides you with more HP than most other DPS classes. Every point of stamina gained at no opportunity cost to your DPS stats should always be considered.
Your health pool (largely determined by stamina) determines the amount of healing you receive from Bloodthirst and Enraged Regeneration. Both abilities regenerate health based on your maximum health. An increase to stamina increases the healing granted by these abilites.
abbr. STA
[top]Armor
Armored to the Teeth (3 talent points) gives you 1 AP for every 36 points of armor. One should also consider to an extent the amount of armor on an item due to the AP granted from it.
Armor is not primarily a DPS stat. It may help your survivability by reducing the amount of damage you take if you were forced to take physical hits from hard-hitting mobs. Having a higher amount may be the determining factor if you were to take a hit and get healed or get one-shot.
For example, if you have 20,000 HP and 16635 armor, your damage taken would be 50%, and you would die from 2 hits from a 20,000 physical attack. Any additional armor would allow you to survive an additional hit, and increase your time to live. Armor has linear gains for time to live against physical attackers. If you were being attacked by 10 level 83 attackers that did 1000 DPS each, the damage would be 10000 DPS then modified by your armor, taking it down to 5000 DPS. You would die then in 4 seconds. An additional 1000 points of armor would reduce this DPS to 4854. You would die then in 4.12 seconds, an increase of .12 seconds of survival. An additional 1000 points of armor thereafter would reduce this DPS to 4716. You would die then in 4.24 seconds, an increase of the same amount of time as the last 1000 point of armor.
[top]Relevance of Base Weapon Speed
The base speed of your weapon determines the basis of your auto attack speed, the relative size of that damage, partially determines the size of weapon based instant attacks, and fully determines the size of your Slam damage. For white attacks, base weapon speed is multiplied with the DPS from AP and added to the weapons‘ base damage range to determine the basis of your weapon damage.
This is how hard (before armor mitigation) your white attacks will hit for. However, special weapon-based attacks like Whirlwind use the normalized weapon speed of 3.3 in this calculation. Generally, slower weapons have a higher base damage range, which is exempt from the AP normalization. This means that slower weapons will sill hit a little harder than faster weapons on these kinds of attacks. Slam is not normalized, meaning it uses the weapon’s speed instead of the normalized speed of 3.3. Slam profits fully from slower base weapon speed instead of partially. The same is true for Deep Wounds damage, which is always calculated from your average weapon damage shown on your character tab. Weapons with slower base speeds and/or higher damage ranges end up being more powerful for scaling instant damage than faster ones, regardless of their DPS. If you have two differing speed weapons, the slower one with higher damage range should generally be worn in the main hand to fully scale Deep Wounds, Slam, and Whirlwind as long as the faster weapon’s DPS isn’t too much higher. For example, it may be better to wear [Sword of Justice] in the main hand and [Titansteel Destroyer] in the offhand, even if the Destroyer was purple.
If your have great combat ratings and are able to have near 100% HSF, then having a faster main hand will allow you to deliver the bonus damage from Heroic Strike at a faster rate, since you will not be mostly limited by rage, but limited by the rate at which you can cast it. This creates a kind of balancing effect with the scaling of instant abilities and slower weapons. Conclusively, this balance lets you effectively use the highest DPS weapon in the main hand as long as the weapon is not too much faster than the other. If the main hand is faster and has more DPS than the off hand, HSF will become watered down as the off hand will not be doing as much damage as well as swinging less quickly.
[top]SEP and Stat Interdependancy
All of your DPS stats are interdependent, meaning that an increase in one stat can increase the value of another stat. This is the main reason why different gear levels provide different yields for individual stat gains. An increase of one point to one of your stats does not always yield the same amount of absolute DPS. For example ArP not only increases the damage of your normal hits but also the damage your critical hits. Increasing your critical strike chance by 1% at zero ArP will grant you less of a damage increase than increasing it by 1% at 50% ArP. The same is true the other way around. Generally, the higher an individual stat, the more your gain from an increase in other stats dependent on that stat. These dependencies vary greatly from one stat to another. Stat balancing therefore is important to maximize your gains.
One method to balancing this phenomenon is Strength Equivalency Points or SEP for short. Using a program, mathematical calculations are performed to assign ratios to each stat based on how much DPS is gained by an increase in that stat compared to the DPS gain of an increase in 1 point of strength. Strength would have an SEP of 1.000 and other stats would be higher or lower depending on their relative power to strength. With each change in gear, buffs, etc. SEP can be recalculated to find the new values for each stat. Items then can be assigned a total SEP score based on the total stats they have and their respective SEP values.
[top]STR vs AP/AGI Item Comparison
Plate DPS gear has itemization across strength, stamina, and two other stats. If any of the two other stats are hit rating (assuming you have enough for the special cap) or Haste rating, then there may be a good amount of leather or mail items with the same item level that are better. These kind of items have itemization across Agility, AP, Stamina, and two other stats for a total of 5 instead of 4. Due to itemization mechanics, the 5 stat items have more stat points than 4 stat items. Most of the 5 stat items have either haste or hit on them, but have less points dedicated to stamina, a non-DPS stat. The best items in the game use the 5 stat template and have either crit, expertise, or armor penetration as the two variable stats, and have sockets for added customization. A good example is [Soul-Devouring Cinch], which compared to a good same item level plate belt, [Girdle of Embers], is about 25% better. A well itemized 4 stat plate piece will beat out most 5-stat pieces with hit or haste due to Armored to the Teeth talent, but not a 5-stat piece without hit or haste.
This is also true for items with little or no armor, such as rings, necks, and cloaks. [Godbane Signet] is moderately better than [Sif’s Promise] even though they are the same item level and have the same extra stats. The AP/AGI ring has 229 item points (Stamina costs 2/3 pt and AP 1/2 pt) while the STR ring only has 204. The AP/AGI ring also puts less into stamina.
[top]Best in Slot setups per Raiding Tier
Please visit the spreadsheet thread, here: http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t37462-w…on_spreadsheet
[top]Trinket Type Choice
Automatic (proc) trinkets have internal cooldowns smaller than cooldowns on on use trinkets, so these trinkets are generally better than on-use trinkets. There may be some short fights where an on use trinket will be better in conjunction with stacking other major cooldowns, but these situations may be rare. An automatic trinket is usually more reliable, especially on longer fights.
[top]Stat Caps
When carefully setting up the gear for a Fury Warrior, it is imperative to keep in mind the various cap levels of different stat gains. A cap is a sweet spot that once passed, will see a slight or complete drop in SEP value of that stat. Continuing to obtain that particular stat once capped, will see diminished or even no gain compared to previous increases. In order to optimize the stat spread on your gear for maximum DPS potential, these caps must be respected. There are three general types of caps: hard, soft, and effectiveness. A „hard“ cap means that there is no benefit in passing it. A „soft“ cap means that there is still benefit in passing it, but once passed will see a sharp decline in value after that point. An „effectiveness“ cap refers to the point at which increases before the cap were slightly increasing, but increases after the cap were slightly decreasing.
[top]The Expertise Cap
The expertise cap is considered a „hard“ cap. Any excess will result in zero theoretical gain. From what you have read in previous discussion, the dodge cap for a boss is 6.5 percent. One must come up with 26 expertise points (214 rating) to circumvent every dodge. Expertise rating exists on items such as [The Jawbone] or [Ruthlessness] for example, or gems such as [Design: Precise Scarlet Ruby] or [Item not found!]. It is important to note that the game UI truncates the display of your anti-dodge in steps of .25%. The combat system however does not truncate your anti-dodge and it remains true to the amount of rating you do have. No amount of rating is wasted unless you go over the 214 rating mark. In a raid setting with raid buffs, expertise is usually the most DPS increasing stat along with hit rating if you have not reached their respective caps. At 6.25% anti-dodge (25 expertise) there will still be a very miniscule amount of dodges, and an increase in expertise from gems at this point may not be optimal versus another stat, since there is less than a 1/400 chance your attack will be dodged at 206 to 214 rating. At 1.4 attacks per second, you are likely to get a dodge during a 4m46s fight. Therefore depending on the fight length and frequency of your attacks, you can justify running with between 25 and 26 expertise if you can replace it with a better stat, because you might not be dodged on a particular fight.
[top]The Hit Cap
The hit cap is considered a „soft“ cap. Any excess over the cap will result in gains much smaller than before the cap. It is a common misconception that hit after the cap is worthless, which is just not true. Hit after the cap is valuable to a degree of preference, and when insuring against rotations slips from rage starvation from miss streaks. The soft cap for misses on bosses is 8%. With 3 points into Precision, one must come up with 5% additional hit chance, equating to 164 hit rating to circumvent missing special attacks. Also, Alliance players can use the Draenei racial to grant them an additional 1% hit if they are in the same party as the Draenei. This means then you would only need 4% hit chance from hit rating, equating to 131 rating. Hit rating exists on items such as [Surge Needle Ring] or [Valorous Dreadnaught Battleplate] or gems such as [Item not found!] or [Item not found!]. Once the player has surpassed the yellow soft cap for misses (8%) any additional points of hit begin to remove the white cap for misses (27%). Again, once you have reached the yellow cap it is perfectly fine to supplement it further as long as the hit rating appears on your best available items. Examples of these items (tier 8 progression) could be [Frosted Adroit Handguards] or [Death’s Bite] if you don’t have access to a better weapon. The hit rating is not wasted because it reduces the effects of rage starvation.
[top]Crit Equating Strength Point
There is an“effectiveness“ cap for crit rating. Due to the expertise and hit caps one must reach to DPS effectively in a raid, there are a lot of items that one may pick up to become raid ready that have hit and expertise rating yet are devoid of agility or crit. Such items could be [Staggering Legplates] or [The Jawbone]. If enough of these items are worn, it is likely that your crit rate will be low enough to result in your Flurry uptime being ineffective. Flurry is a very important DPS scaling talent and to make it effective, there must be a sufficient crit rate to keep it active for a healthy amount of time. Therefore, there is a low point in gear or raid buffs where a point in crit will be more effective than a point in strength. Once enough crit is placed into the gearset, there will be a moment where strength will become equal to or better than crit.
Secondly, this phenomenon can also occur when you are at a high level of gear giving you a high amount of attack power, while your crit chance drops or remains the same due to changes in gear. For example, upgrading from [Stormrune Edge] to [Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion] will give you a lot more attack power and weapon damage at the cost of crit chance. This can occur enough to where crit rate will be abnormally low compared to the large AP gains, resulting to where increasing a point in crit rating is better than increasing a point in strength. Crit chance must be high enough to effectively fuel Flurry uptime, Deep Wounds delivery, and crit bonus damage for the high attack power.
It is not very easy to determine these points without the aid of a spreadsheet. If you do not have access to a spreadsheet, then aim for an unbuffed crit rate of about 30% at low gear levels to 38% at high gear levels. Also, it is important to note that after this cap, a point in strength increases the worth of a point in crit, so one must not make the mistake of gemming all strength, but rather balancing them to a degree more towards strength. The value of strength rises at a faster rate when increasing crit than the value of crit rises when increasing strength. Users with some experience in calculus may be able to grasp these concepts by relating them to first and second order derivatives.
[top]Armor Penetration surpassing Strength
The next cap you must consider is when progressing through 226-245 item level gear selection. This is occurs when armor penetration as a stat starts to become the best stat available. We learned before how the armor penetration effectiveness cap works, and how armor penetration interacts with it. %Damage applied increases at a very small increasing rate, and there is a point in total armor penetration level and general DPS where a point in armor penetration equals and surpasses a point in strength in effectiveness. This level can be found in a spreadsheet or can be generally looked out for once you have around 400 armor penetration rating without a penetration proc trinket, or 300 armor penetration rating with a penetration trinket, and a good amount of gen slots in your items. Note that this level where you need to switch from strength to ArP generally decreases the more your gear level increases. This concept may be difficult to understand for beginners or those who don’t fully understand how gear progression works.
[top]Armor Penetration Cap
With armor penetration becoming the best stat eventually, players can stack it until 100% of the armor penetration effectiveness cap is removed. It takes approximately 13.996 points in armor penetration to remove 1% of this cap, and 1400 total rating for 100%. Any additional armor penetration after this point cannot remove any more armor based on the effectiveness cap rule. It is important to keep in mind this hard cap, especially when you are using trinkets like [Grim Toll] and [Mjolnir Runestone] or the [Hearty Rhino] food buff because one can easily go over the 1400 mark with the proc active.
Amount of penetration rating needed to reach 100%:
| Combo | Rating |
|---|---|
| No trinket | 1400 |
| Grim Toll | 788 |
| Mjolnir Runestone | 735 |
| Needle-encrusted Scorpion | 722 |
| Grim+Mjolnir | 123 |
| Grim+Needle | 110 |
| Mjolnir+Needle | 57 |
If you wish to go over the cap with a trinket proc active on the argument that not all of the penetration goes wasted, you must keep in mind that 17%-20% of the time (different trinket uptimes) any overage in penetration goes wasted. This reduces the effectiveness of penetration by 17%-20% if you are at or near the cap with a trinket proc, and will make strength better at this point. However, additional armor penetration can continue to be added so that it eventually overcomes this defecit and surpasses strength yet again in effectiveness, despite the 17-20% comparative hit.
[top]White Crit Cap
Next, one must be able to identify if and when they are approaching the white crit cap. If you are at this point in gear, however, it is likely that your heroic strike frequency is very high and your white attacks are a small portion of your damage. Yet, for that small portion of your damage and for additional chances to get Deep Wounds in the off hand, any increase in crit chance will effectively do nothing. If you are at this point and you wish to upgrade your gear and increase your crit chance, then to get the full effect of that crit rate increase, one must also supplement that increase in crit with hit rating. This white crit cap can be described as a variable soft cap, depending on the relationship between your hit chance and crit chance.
[top]Gear Enchants
Regardless of your gear level, you should always use the best enchants available to you with some exceptions due to cost and indifference. Enchantments should be widely available on any server and material prices are rather reasonable. For most gear slots, enchant choices are limited and clear enough to where making the right enchant choice is easy.
[top]Weapons
In most circumstances, the best enchant to have on your weapons is Enchant Weapon – Berserking. Another alternative in a very specific circumstance is Enchant Weapon – Executioner. For Executioner to be better than Berserking, you must be at a point in gear where armor penetration rating is valued extremely high compared to attack power. This point is reached when armor penetration rating has an SEP of 1.263, or when 1 armor penetration rating becomes 1.67 times better than 2 points of attack power. SEP is discussed in section 7.4. Each of these three enchants are known to have a proc rate of 1.0 PPM.
PPM mechanics: A specific PPM value directly translates to a chance of occurrence on the connection of a physical ability in that hand. Proc chance per hit is not affected by increased attack speed effects. However, the more often your attacks will come due to those effects, the more opportunities will come for that chance to occur in the same time frame. To calculate the chance to proc on a physical attack, use the following formula:
which is the same as…
The higher the PPM and slower the weapon speed, the higher chance to proc will be per hit. Since slower weapons hit slower, chance to proc and various enchant uptimes do not scale with weapon speed when concerned with swung attacks only. However, since we also have instant attacks, various enchant uptimes will be greater with slower weapons since the chance to proc will be higher on those instant attacks than with faster weapons. This notion is a contributor to the slower vs faster weapon problem discussed in section 7.3.
Since these enchants do not have an internal cooldown, calculating the percentage of the time they are active can be complicated. The following formula will give an accurate estimation of the uptime of a given enchant on a given hand:
where PPM is the PPM rate of the enchant
and WepSpd is the speed of the weapon the enchant is on
and Dura is the duration of the proc of the enchant
and HPS is the hits per second the weapon that the enchant is on connects with
[top]Head
Enchants for your head slot are purchased from vendors. The main choice for a head enchant is [Arcanum of Torment]. It can be purchased from Duchess Mynx, the Ebon Blade quartermaster at the Shadow Vault in Ice Crown for 150 Gold (faction discount applies). You need revered reputation with Ebon Hold for this.
Depending on your gear and on whether you are below the Yellow Hit Cap, [Arcanum of Ferocity] might provide greater benefit. It can be purchased from the Cenarion Expedition quartermaster at the Cenarion Refuge for 100 Gold (faction discount applies). Revered reputation with the Cenarion Expedition is required for this. Please note that, as long as you have yellow sockets that can be socketed with +Hit gems or can enchant your gloves with Enchant Gloves – Precision, doing so will always be better than using [Arcanum of Ferocity] instead of [Arcanum of Torment] in order to achieve the Yellow Hit Cap. Therefore, only in very rare cases is [Arcanum of Ferocity] preferable to [Arcanum of Torment].
[top]Shoulder
Enchants for your shoulder slot are mainly purchased from vendors. Usually, [Greater Inscription of the Axe] is your clear choice. It can be purchased from the Sons of Hodir quartermaster Lillehoff at Dun Niffelem for 100 Gold (faction discount applies). Exalted reputation with the Sons of Hodir is required for this.
If you have Inscription as one of your professions, then get Master’s Inscription of the Axe , which can be learned from any inscription trainer at an Inscription skill of 400.
[top]Cloak
You basically have two choices for your cloak enchant: Enchant Cloak – Major Agility or Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed. Which of the two is better depends on your gear. They are very close to each other on most levels, though Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed coming out on top on the high end.
If you are an engineer, get Flexweave Underlay which is a hair better than the non-engineering agility enchant, plus it also gives you a cool parachute!
If for some reason you have Tailoring, Swordguard Embroidery is better than both due to its proc nature. It requires a skill of 420 to make and 400 to use.
[top]Chest
For your chestpiece, Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats is the best choice.
[top]Bracers
For your bracers, your main choice is usually Enchant Bracers- Greater Assault. However, if you are below the 6.5% dodge cap and cannot reach it through gems alone, or are able to hit the cap perfectly with a +15 increment (only after exhausting the glove option), you should use Enchant Bracers – Expertise.
If you have Leatherworking as one of your professions, Fur Lining – Attack Power is the way to go, regardless of the expertise cap.
[top]Gloves
For your gloves,Enchant Gloves – Crusher is usually the best enchant. If you are below the 6.5% dodge cap and cannot reach it through gems alone, or are able to hit the cap perfectly with a +15 increment, you should get Enchant Gloves – Expertise. Using this enchant is preferable over using Enchant Bracers – Expertise for your bracers. If you are below the yellow hit cap, Enchant Gloves – Precision is usually your best bet and should be used before using 20 hit gems if needed.
If engineering is one of your professions, Hyperspeed Accelerators is definitely the best glove enchant.
[top]Legs
Your only choice of leg enchant is [Icescale Leg Armor], made by a leatherworker of your liking with at least 425 skill in leatherworking. It requires 2x[Arctic Fur], 2x[Icy Dragonscale] and 1x[Frozen Orb] to make.
[top]Feet
Choosing the right enchant for this slot if probably the most difficult choice. Enchant Boots – Icewalker is used if you want a pure DPS enchant. Enchant Boots – Tuskarr’s Vitalityis used if movement has a large role in your play. Enchant Boots – Cat’s Swiftness is an alternative and provides the same benefit, yet yields a small more amount of crit chance at the cost of 15 stamina. The choice is basically whether the increased movement speed benefits you more than the increased stats from Enchant Boots – Icewalker. The movement speed’s effectiveness depends on your DPS and the amount of movement involved. For very movement intensive fights in which you spend time running in and out of melee range of a mob, one of the two movement speed enchants is superior.
Please note that Enchant Boots – Greater Assault is not a good choice as it is always (unless you have 700+ hit rating) worse than Enchant Boots – Icewalker.
[top]Rings
If one of your professions is Enchanting, you are able to enchant your rings with Enchant Ring – Assault. The old Ring enchants are not a choice anymore as they are always worse than the AP-enchant.[/quote]
[top]Sockets and Gems
There are many gem sockets with different colors in raiding gear. These sockets are designed to make your gear customizable and better itemized as you can choose which stats to put in them. The sockets cost significant itemization points however, so one must maximize each socket’s potential or you may lose out on potential stats. Along with gem sockets also come bonuses. Bonuses are not included in the item’s itemization points, and are pluses for matching the gem colors. If the item has a blue socket, most of the time the bonus does not outweigh having to use a green or purple gem over a red or orange one. However, due to metagem requirements, having one or two purple or green gems is necessary.
There are three different quality gems available. Uncommon quality with 12-14 points, Superior quality with 16 points, or Epic quality with 20 points. Epic quality gems can either be prospected from titanium ore, or bought for 10 or 20 Badges of Triumph depending on the color. Red and yellow colored gems cost 20, while Purple, Green, and Orange only cost 10 badges. A Strength or Hit Rating gem can also be found from fishing dailies, or bought from the auction house. If at all possible, these epic gems should be used in all of your sockets unless you predict that you will replace that piece of gear or gem relatively soon. Using superior gems in at most Naxxramas gear is acceptable, but if you still use them in Ulduar gear or higher, then you may be seen as cheap or lazy. Superior quality gems are mined from saronite or titanium nodes, or prospected from saronite or titanium ore.
[top]Red Sockets
Red sockets are the most valuable socket, as they match the highest DPS boosting gems available. Red gems can be used to reach the expertise cap, or boost your strength or armor penetration.
-Strength: [Bold Cardinal Ruby], [Bold Stormjewel], [Bold Scarlet Ruby]
-Expertise: [Precise Cardinal Ruby], [Precise Scarlet Ruby]
-Armor Penetration: [Fractured Cardinal Ruby], [Fractured Scarlet Ruby]
-Dragon’s Eyes: [Bold Dragon’s Eye], [Fractured Dragon’s Eye], [Precise Dragon’s Eye]
When you are at the crit equating strength point, an orange gem can be used for boosting your crit and strength simultaneously.
-Strength/Crit: [Inscribed Ametrine], [Inscribed Monarch Topaz]
[top]Yellow Sockets
Yellow sockets are almost as valuable as a red socket, and should be used to boost your hit if you are under cap with pure hit, or strength/hit. Otherwise, you should determine if the socket bonus achieved by matching the color combined with the stats on an orange gem(s) will outweigh the effect of using a red gem (strength, armor pen, or expertise). In lay terms, you don’t want to use a strength/crit gem in a yellow socket for a 4 agility bonus if your gearset values armor pen much much more than strength and crit. Also if your gear level is very high and have surpassed the white crit cap, strength/haste will be better than strength/crit.
-Strength/Crit: [Inscribed Ametrine], [Inscribed Monarch Topaz]
-Strength/Hit: [Etched Ametrine], [Etched Monarch Topaz]
-Hit: [Rigid Dragon’s Eye], [Rigid King’s Amber], [Rigid Stormjewel], [Rigid Autumn’s Glow]
-Strength/Haste (over crit cap only): [Fierce Ametrine]
When you have clearly passed the crit equating strength point and crit is better than strength, a smooth yellow gem should be used instead of an inscribed orange one.
-Crit: [Smooth Dragon’s Eye], [Smooth King’s Amber], [Smooth Autumn’s Glow]
In a special case when you are barely under the hit and expertise caps, you can use an accurate orange gem to boost them simultaneously for those very last few points.
-Expertise/Hit: [Accurate Ametrine], [Accurate Monarch Topaz]
[top]Blue Sockets
Blue sockets aren’t as good as yellow or red sockets because they force you to use gems with half the DPS value to unlock your socket bonus. All green and purple gems come with stamina, which does not increase DPS. The total stamina gained from these gems is likely to not make any difference in survival. However, one or two of these gems are required to activate your meta gem. It is best to place your green or purple gems in items with a blue socket that have the best bonuses. This is because you want to minimize the stats that you lose from not matching colors due to the fact that forgoing most bonuses by using all max DPS gems is optimal.
If you are less than 12 rating away from reaching the hit or expertise cap, it is suggested to use a single hit/stamina or expertise/stamina gem to finally close that gap. Remember, being a few rating away from the cap is okay as it becomes more and more unlikely for the dodge/miss to occur.
-Hit/Stamina: [Vivid Eye of Zul], [Vivid Forest Emerald]
-Expertise/Stamina: [Guardian’s Dreadstone], [Guardian’s Twilight Opal]
Otherwise, depending on SEP values, there are four other options for your blue gem. The prismatic 6 all stats gem has more DPS points than all superior quality (blue) gems, and sometimes also epic quality (purple) gems.
-6 All Stats: [Enchanted Tear]
-Strength/Stamina: [Sovereign Dreadstone], [Sovereign Twilight Opal]
-ArP/Stamina: [Puissant Dreadstone], [Puissant Twilight Opal]
-Crit/Stamina: [Jagged Eye of Zul], [Jagged Forest Emerald]
On some items, there are +8 socket bonuses with high SEP value, for example [Obsidian Greathelm].
If you are still using blue quality (superior) gems and you have more of these items equipped than blue gems needed to activate your meta gem, putting an extra blue gem in these items will not hurt your DPS and give your health a small boost, as the total of the bonus and the blue gem nearly equals that of a max DPS gem.
As resources increase, players will generally not use any superior gems and are able to have every gem be epic quality. Due to this fact, matching blue sockets does not become viable at all, since there are no high SEP +10 socket bonuses to compete with the pure 20 point gems. In this case, players only use red/orange/yellow gems only, and use the [Nightmare Tear] and [ZZOLD Design: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] combination to satisfy the metagem requirement. The [Design: Nightmare Tear] is placed in the blue socket which will yield the highest quality socket bonus.
[top]Meta Socket
The meta socket exists in your helmet and for purposes of DPS, exists to boost the damage of your critical strikes by 3%, turning 220% critical strikes into 227.2% critical strikes. If for some reason your helm does not have a meta socket, you need to get one immediately. There are two very similar meta gems that provide this bonus. Due to their similarity, picking which gem to use comes down to how good the bonuses on your items with blue sockets are.
–[Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] requires 1 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue gem. (green gem counts as yellow and blue, orange gem counts as red and yellow, purple gem counts as red and blue, and prismatic counts as all three)
–[Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] requires 2 blue gems.
The difference between the two gems is having to use an extra blue gem. You must compare the difference yourself to choose the right gem for you. If your blue socket item bonuses are terrible, then I suggest to use the Relentless Meta. If your blue socket item bonuses are excellent, then I suggest to use the Chaotic Meta. If you want to be 100% sure, then use a spreadsheet to help you decide. The difference may sometimes be so small that its fine for it to not matter which gem to choose.
Relentless: maxDPS gem, +0.4 AP, +some dodge, +26.2 armor
Chaotic: green/purple gem, +bonus, +4.03 crit rating worth of crit chance
Again, as resources are not an issue and min/maxing is more apparent, using the [Nightmare Tear] and [ZZOLD Design: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] combination as described before is the best strategy.
[top]Glyph Selection
Choosing the right glyphs is not that much of a challenge due to the limited supply of useful ones. Different fights and situations call for different optimal glyph combinations, and one must choose the best setup for them.
[top]Major Glyphs
Glyph choices for the 3 major glyph slots come down to the following:
Glyph of Heroic Strike causes your critical hits from Heroic Strike to return 10 rage, reducing rage depletion due to HS use. The effect happens almost a whole half second after the crit due to server-client-combatlog lag. The gain from this may seem small but it is very considerable for increasing your HSF. The effect of this is very self circular, meaning that first HS has to be used enough to where you get enough rage from the glyph to let you HS more. Being aggressive with HS and taking chances with it will give you much more benefit than being conservative with HS with this glyph. You can’t win without gambling here, and your chances are very good.
Glyph of Cleaving makes your Cleave ability hit up to 3 instead of 2 mobs. The value of this glyph varies, depending on the set of fights you encounter. In single-target fights, you will gain nothing from it. However, it can really shine in Boss fights with adds or against trash, considerably increasing your total damage in these situations. While soloing it is probably the most valuable as packs of mobs can literally be „cleaved“ faster.
Glyph of Execution increases the base damage of your Execute ability by 380. Since Execute is only used after 20% health in between your regular rotation rage allowing, this glyph has limited value.
Glyph of Rending allows your Rend to tick 7 times instead of 5 with one application. This increases the effectiveness of „Rend-Dancing“ for advanced play in single target raid DPS discussed in section 3.6. Since Rend-dancing is used only when specific qualifications are met, this glyph has limited value.
Glyph of Whirlwind reduces the cooldown of your Whirlwind ability from 10 to 8 seconds. Not only does this mean that you can use Whirlwind more often, it also puts Whirlwind at a multiple of the cooldown of Bloodthirst. This minimizes damage loss (loss only being to lag or player error) due to overlap between itself and Bloodthirst.
Glyph of Bloodthirst doubles the healing you receive from your Bloodthirst ability, boosting it to 2% of your maximum health for each hit for up to a maximum 3 hits. While it has no direct influence on your damage output at all, it can help increase survivability. You will usually not need this glyph in a raid environment and it is mainly used as a toy for other events. When soloing (e.g. leveling or farming), this glyph eliminates most if not all downtime caused by health loss. It also increases your PvP survivability when combined with other cooldowns, especially during times without heals. Using a hybrid Fury-Prot spec (shown here) and specialized tank gear with this glyph, one can solo certain old-world raid bosses by healing themselves with Bloodthirst.
Glyph of Heroic Strike and Glyph of Whirlwind should be used in any case. For the third major slot, the glyph of choice depends on what you mainly do. If you’re soloing or PvPing more than raiding or if they are more important to you, Glyph of Bloodthirst is the way to go. Otherwise, you are left with choosing between Glyph of Execution or Glyph of Rending for single target scenarios and Glyph of Cleaving for scenarios with more than two targets. Again, the Execute or Rending glyphs provide a slight single target boost, while Cleave grants a substantial boost for any multi-target situation. The value of the cleave glyph pulls ahead of execute very quickly with only a few multi-target fights in a set of many, so choose that one if they are important. Also you may choose to keep a stock of all three glyphs and switch between them given the scenario.
[top]Minor Glyphs
For your minor glyph slots there really are only 4 glyphs to choose from. As they are minor glyphs, all are merely personal preference.
Glyph of Battle increases the duration of your Battle Shout by 2 minutes. With Booming Voice, this 2 minutes is further increased by 1 minute, leading to a Battle Shout duration of 6 minutes. This helps using less rage and fewer GCDs for refreshing this buff.
Glyph of Command increases the duration of your Commanding Shout by 1 minute. With Booming Voice, this 2 minutes is further increase by 1 minute, leading to a Commanding Shout duration of 6 minutes. This helps using less rage and fewer GCDs for refreshing this buff.
Glyph of Bloodrage reduces the health cost of Bloodrage to zero saving you 1299 health each time. It is especially nice when minimizing damage taken is important.
Glyph of Charge increases the maximum range of your charge ability from 25 to 30 yards. It can help in PvP by allowing you to get a charge through before being put into combat by an opponent’s spell or attack. For soloing, it lets you charge the mob earlier. For raiding, the only real benefit is sometimes being able to charge before being put in combat on trash. Bosses put you in combat as soon as they are pulled, and you have to be very skilled at timing your charge as the pull occurs. This glyph helps in that sense as well.
[top]Mastering Raid Buffs
Believe it or not, as a Fury Warrior in a raid, more about half of your damage comes from having every single raid buff possible. You have the potential to do double your damage from having all buffs in the game than if you had none. It is extremely important that the player understands how and where every one of these buffs comes from, and which classes share these buffs. This way, you can properly complain about missing certain buffs or explain to your raid leader what is missing. Some of these important buffs also can be covered by the warrior itself, so you must know what you can do to help. Modifying your user interface can help in making sure you have all the buffs you need. User interface modifications are explained in section 16. Knowing the icons of each raid buff will help you in quickly identifying what you are missing.
[top]Importance of your Support
What helps the most is your group or raid to be willing to accomidate for your buffs and lack of buffs. A proper line of communication like Ventrilo is helpful in communicating your needs. Simply saying „Warriors still need Kings“ before the fight starts can cover missing potential damage that you otherwise would not have gotten. If you died and were revived mid-fight, getting all your buffs back is nice unless you want to do half your damage for the rest of the fight. Your raid or group members must be experienced at providing each of their group buffs so that you can reap full benefits. Something as simple as having totems placed in the correct range can make a huge difference in damage. Please note that spells in the same category do not stack. Multiple sources are available to ensure flixibility in stacking a raid group.
[top]Attack Speed Effects
There are three different raid given type of attack speed effects: Major Speed, Minor Speed, and Heroism/Bloodlust. All three effects stack multiplicatively with eachother and haste rating. These effects are all properly called IAS (increased attack speed) effects. They stack together in the following fashion:
Major Speed
Major speed increases your attack speed by 16%-20% and can be given in two different ways:
| Spell | Class, Spec | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windfury Totem | Shaman/Enhancement Shaman | 30 yard totem, base 16% effect. Can be increased to 20% through Enhancement talents. |
| Improved Icy Talons | Frost Death Knight | Applies 20% effect on the raid when Icy Touch is cast. |
Minor Speed
Minor speed increases your attack speed by 3% and can be given in two different ways:
| Spell | Class, Spec | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Swift Retribution | Retribution Paladin | Applied with any paladin aura. |
| Improved Moonkin Form | Balance Druid | Applied with moonkin form’s aura, 45 yards. |
Heroism/Bloodlust
Heroism (Alliance) or Bloodlust (Horde) is a raid-wide cooldown casted by any shaman, usually used to increase DPS in a specific part of an encounter. It increases our melee attack speed by 30% for 40 seconds. It is very important to know about when this will be used so that you can be ready to go all-out damage and use your own cooldowns such as Deathwish and Potion of Speed. If buffed with this spell, you will also gain exhaustion, which prevents you from being buffed with it again for the next ten minutes or until you die. This generally means that you can only use it once per attempt. It is possible to be killed and be ressurected with a soulstone or rebirth so that a second heroism can be used on you, but due to buffs falling on death and DPS loss while dead, it is not worth it.
[top]Attack Power Scaling
Your total attack power is equivalent to the base attack power that you get from your class, gear, talents, and strength multiplied by modifiers such as the +10% raid buff and 2 piece Ymirjar Lord’s Battlegear. Strength also has it’s own increasing modifiers. Since strength gives attack power and since attack power has it’s own modifiers, strength therefore gets more modifiers than attack power. This relationship clearly states how strength scales more quickly than it’s equivalent attack power and how important the raid buffs that provide them are.
Blessing of Kings
Blessing of Kings is a base spell that can be casted by any paladin and lasts for up to 60 minutes. It increases your total Strength, Agility, and Stamina by 10%. This modifier also applies to all additive buffs. If this is not available, leatherworkers may cast [Drums of Forgotten Kings] for a slightly lesser effect.
+10% AP
Your total AP can also be scaled further by three different sources.
| Spell | Class, Spec | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Unleashed Rage | Enhancement Shaman | Applies on shaman’s critical melee attacks. 45 yards, 10s duration. |
| Abomination’s Might | Blood Deathknight | Applies with Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate. 45 yards, 10s duration. |
| Trueshot Aura | Marksmanship Hunter | 45 yard aura. |
Stacking
These effects stack multiplicatively with eachother, and also with your talents. For example, let’s find the actual amount of attack power gained through the strength on [Sif’s Promise]
| action | calculation | value |
|---|---|---|
| Base STR | 72 | |
| Strength after Imp. Bers. Stance | STR*1.2 | 86.4 |
| Strength after BoK | STR*1.2*1.1 | 95.04 |
| AP from Strength | STR*1.2*1.1*2 | 190.08 |
| AP after +10% AP | STR*1.2*1.1*2*1.1 | 209.088 |
Actual conversion of STR to AP: 2.904
Actual conversion of 2AP to AP: 2.2
1 STR is 32% better than 2 AP
Therefore 2 AP is equivalent to .7576 STR
This is also the constant SEP definition of AP with these existing raid buffs.
Conclusively, you will see a significant increase to your attack power, crit chance, and health with this BoK active. Also, these effects increase the value of Strength, Attack Power, and Agility when compared to other stats.
[top]Armor Reduction
Armor reductions increase the physical damage you deal with your melee based attacks by reducing the target’s armor by a certain amount. These effects also reduce the Armor Penetration Effectiveness Cap, which was previously discussed a few times in this guide. Each different category stacks multiplicatively with eachother. Please see the quick reference section for a review of the armor values of different debuff stacking.
Major Armor
The major armor debuff reduces the target’s armor by 20%.
| Spell | Class, Spec | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sunder Armor | Warrior | Is applied 5 times with Devastate or Sunder Armor for the full effect. Lasts 30 seconds per application. |
| Expose Armor | Rogue | Lasts 6 seconds per combo point used. |
| Acid Spit | Hunter Worm Pet | Is applied 2 times for the full effect. Lasts 30 seconds per application. |
Minor Armor
The minor armor debuff reduces the target’s armor by 5%.
| Spell | Class, Spec | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Faerie Fire | Druid | Lasts 5 minutes. |
| Curse of Weakness | Warlock | Lasts 2 minutes. |
| Sting | Hunter Wasp Pet | Lasts 20 seconds. |
Shattering Throw
Shattering throw reduces the target’s armor by 20%. It is considered as a supplementary DPS boost for melee and Hunters for its 10 second duration. Since only Warriors can cast this ability and it has a 5 minute cooldown, it is your responsibility to cast it at the correct time during an encounter. Depending on how many Warriors are in your group, it may have to be discussed who is casting Shattering Throw in what order and at what time so that the debuffs do not overlap and so the raid can benefit the most from it. Excellent times to cast shattering throw are any time during Heroism/Bloodlust, or if not, at a point in time where all of the physical DPS classes are attacking its target.
Casting Shattering Throw as a Fury Warrior can be a bit cumbersome because it requires changing stances, standing still for a bit, and losing all other damage for the duration you need to put it up. This yields a hefty DPS loss for the time required to use, so it is important to be able to do it quickly so that you can return to Berserker Stance and continue to DPS. 3 points in Tactical Mastery are required to have the 25 rage needed after changing stances. Please also remember to unqueue Heroic Strike as you cannot lose any further rage before casting. This simple 2-hit macro gets the job done perfectly, and also notifies your melee in /say that you are putting it up.
#showtooltip Shattering Throw
/stopcasting
/cast arms stance
/cast shattering throw
/say Casting Shattering Throw!
It is arguable that a single cast of Shattering Throw from a high-DPS Fury Warrior will not benefit the raid DPS enough to overcome the DPS loss that the Fury Warrior experiences. Since it is a casted ability, the Warrior is completely locked out of his auto attacks as well as his instants for the 1.5s cast. Also, this cast will reset the swing timer of the Warrior. If for example he was 2.0s into his 2.1s attack swing and casts the ability, he will be locked out of auto-attacks for the 1.5s cast, plus have to wait an additional 2.1s for the new swing, totaling to an unbearable 5.6 second swing. Also, due to having switched into Arms Stance, he will be with 0 rage when returning to Berserker Stance, due to the 25 rage cost of the throw. Having 0 rage and also having to wait on the new swing to get rage means abysmal personal DPS (only some DWounds ticks and the damage from the throw itself) for that time frame until recovery is re-established. Shattering Throw increases the DPS of physical attackers by 2-5% (scaling down with more ArP) for 10 seconds. Assuming there are 8 to 12 physical attackers that is not the casting Warrior, this increases raid DPS by a 16-60 effective-percentages over 10 seconds, comparing to locking out one person out of 90% of their damage for 3-5 seconds. If your raid is a higher geared/progression oriented group, then physical attackers will have good amounts of armor penetration, watering down the effectiveness of said Shattering Throw. Yes, the more armor penetration you have, the less effective Shattering Throw is. Conclusively, Shattering Throw becomes less and less effective the higher the DPS value of the casting Warrior, the higher armor penetration values of physical attackers, and with a lower amount of physical attackers.
[top]Battle Shout/Might
Battle Shout shares the same category as Blessing of Might only. If there are two Paladins in your raid and one of them is Retribution spec, it is his job to keep up his version of this buff, and he should have it talented. His talented buff will match the attack power contribution of your 5/5 improved Battle Shout via Commanding Presence +3. Since the Paladin buff is stronger, it will overwrite yours.
| Attack Power |
|---|
| Talent C.Pres Imp.Might 0548550157561626036883360-4658-5685- |
If there is no Paladin with 2/2 improved might, or there is only one Paladin in which they will have to buff Kings, it is your job to maintain Battle Shout on the party. If it is your job most of the time, it will be worth it to spec into Commanding Presence and Booming Voice, as well as get the [Glyph of Battle]. Doing so is a great convenience in terms of not having to constantly refresh your buff. When refreshing the buff, keep in mind also it’s limited range. Place yourself within the raid so that it will hit everyone that needs it.
[top]+%damage
Damage buffs usually scale multiplicatively and are a great way to scale your damage. This relationship holds true for all DIMs, except for the only case of DIMs from talents in the same talent tree, such as Improved Whirlwind and Unending Fury. There are two categories of damage buffs. One category from a buff that you receive, and the other from a debuff on the target you are attacking.
| 3% Buff |
|---|
| Spell Class, Spec Notes Sanctified RetributionRet PaladinReceived with any aura and is passively active.Ferocious InspirationBeastmaster Hunter10 second buff after the Hunter’s pet crits.Arcane EmpowermentArcane MageAura. |
| 4% Debuff |
|---|
| Spell Class, Spec Notes Blood FrenzyArms WarriorApplied for 10 seconds after the Warrior crits the target.Savage CombatCombat RogueApplied on the Rogue’s target of any poison. |
[top]+Crit Chance
Crit chance increases the chance to crit your physical attacks. There is a buff category of 5%, and a debuff category of up to 3%. You can provide the raid with the 5% buff version through Rampage. If there is a Feral DPS or Feral Tank in your group, then their buff will usually override yours through it’s improved version which sometimes heals you when you crit.
| 5% Buff |
|---|
| Spell Class, Spec Notes Leader of the PackFeral DruidAura.RampageFury WarriorAura. |
| 3% Debuff |
|---|
| Spell Class, Spec Notes Heart of the CrusaderRetribution PaladinApplied with Judgement.Master PoisonerAssassinaiton RogueApplied with Poison.Totem of WrathElemental ShamanApplied with target in Totem range. |
[top]STR/AGI
These buffs give you a static amount of strength and agility, which convert into attack power and crit chance respectively. These buffs scale with all stat modifiers such as Blessing of Kings, and Improved Berserker Stance. The major buff is one of the strongest available for your DPS.
| 155+ STR/AGI |
|---|
| Spell Class, Spec Notes Horn of WinterDeath KnightDuration AuraStrength of EarthShamanTotem. Can be improved up to 178 |
Also, Druids may buff Mark of the Wild, which buffs your STR, AGI, and STAM by 37 baseline, and up to 52 talented. This also gives you 750 (up to 1050 talented) armor which converts into 20.8 (29.1) Attack Power through AttT. Also, gives 54 (up to 76 talented) to all resistances to aid in survivability versus spell damage.
Also remember that you get 2 armor per 1 AGI, also converting into Attack Power.
[top]+Armor
Some armor only buffs are also available which will contribute to your attack power through AttT. Shaman and Paladins can provide these buffs, and the good news is they stack and do not share the same buff group.
| Spell | Class | Notes | Armor Provided (max talented) | Attack Power through AttT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devotion Aura | Paladin | Aura | 1205 (1807.5) | 33.5 (50.2) |
| Stoneskin Totem | Shaman | Totem | 1150 (1380) | 31.9 (38.3) |
[top]Heroic Presence (Alliance)
If you are Alliance it may be worth to note how Draenei are distributed throughout your raid. A Draenei has a passive racial in the form of an Aura which increases your party’s hit chance by 1%. If you are trying to min/max your DPS through having as little hit as possible by not going over the hit cap, you can use this to your advantage.
[top]What to bring to a Raid
If you are raiding with any expectations of success, you will generally be expected by your raid to bring a number of consumables to further increase your stats. Please note that the effects of flasks and elixirs (NOT potions) are increased if the user is an alchemist with Mixology.
For any kind of raid situation, you should bring a flask. With current game mechanics, the available flask is always better than any elixir. The material components for flasks are cheap enough to warrant using them even when farming known instances and not only for progression fights. If you’re cheap and have only got 1 or 2 boss tries left for the evening, you can also use the elixirs increasing your primary stats and one for for survival provided your raid is okay with you not using the optimum consumable. Flasks can be crafted by any alchemist but should preferrably be made by a Master of Elixirs as this will grant a chance to get procs of up to 5 times the usual yield (up to 10 flasks).
The Flask of Endless Rage is your only choice of flask when raiding. It grants 180 AP for 1 hour. It can be crafted by an alchemist at the cost of 7xLichbloom, 3xGoldclover, 1xFrost lotus and 1xEnchanted Vial for 2 Flasks. Flasks count as a battle as well as a guardian elixir so it is not possible to have an elixir active while under the effects of a flask.
The Elixir of Armor Piercing increases your Armor penetration by 45. For this to become better than Flask of Endless Rage, ArP would have to have a SeP value of more than 1.5 which is highly unlikely if not impossible with currently available gear. It counts as a battle elixir of which you can have only one active at any time.
The Elixir of Mighty Strength increases your Strength by 50. Depending on your current gear, this may be better or worse than Elixir of Armor Piercing. However, it will always be worse than Flask of Endless Rage.
The Elixir of Mighty Fortitude is a guardian elixir and can therefore be used together with a battle elixir. If you are using a battle elixir instead of a flask, make sure that you use this as a complement if survival is an issue to any extent.
Additionally, you should have stacks of Indestructible Potion and Potion of Speed. Potions can be crafted by any alchemist but should preferrably be made by a Master of Potions as this will grant a chance to get procs of up to 5 potions for the cost of 1.
An Indestructible Potion increases your armor by 3500 for a duration of 2 minutes, effectively granting you 97 AP due to AttT. This potion is special as you can chug it before the start of a fight and will be able to use a second potion after 1 minute when the initial potion cooldown is finished. Potion of Speed increases your Haste rating by 500 for 15 seconds. It is usually better than an Indestructible Potion when major cooldowns are running. When using a potion before combat starts, it is commonly called „pre-potting.“ Using an Indestructible Potion as the pre-pot is arguably more effective even when using Heroism or Bloodlust at the start of the fight for two reasons. First, it ensures that a minimum percentage of the potion coverage is wasted from non-combat time. Secondly, for a Potion of Speed to become better than an Indestructible Potion, it must be stacked with other high DPS-yielding cooldowns throughout the majority of the potion duration. This cannot be ensured due to the several seconds it takes to initiate combat and things to ramp up after the potion is consumed.
[top]Effects of Surroundings
A great limiting factor to your performance in any situation, is not fully understanding the situation or not fully understanding future possible circumstances in that situation. The more you know about a boss fight, how certain game mechanics work, how spells work, the better you will be prepared for unexpected events and the better you will adapt correctly in the most efficient manner. Two terms that come to mind are situational awareness and experience. Situational awareness is related to how well-aware you are of your changing surroundings. Experience is related to how well you can perform in areas which you have already visited.
[top]Situational Awareness
Situational awareness can arguably be the highest-order skill in World of Warcraft, because any other skill can be learned at basic levels. This awareness is extremely important as a Fury Warrior, because most often we have to monitor many things that are unique to our own DPS mechanics (rage level, rotation location, slam proc, dps procs), while simultaneously observing your surroundings. As humans we only have one central processor to handle multiple threads of information. The more skilled you are in processing your own DPS mechanics, the more effective you will be with your situational awareness. This is true because it takes less effort and time to process your own DPS mechanics, so more of your processing power can be devoted to your situational awareness.
Situational awareness allows you to make informed decisions unique to the situation to supplement your DPS performance. For example, a gob of goo is bouncing toward you, and you position yourself so you may avoid it and it’s DPS-limiting consequences. If you get hit by it, it may put a debuff on you that reduces your DPS, and/or deal threatening damage to you. If you get hit, you may be forced to shield-wall to stay a live, or just plain die. Both limits your ability to maintain full DPS potential. Another example is the opposite: A beacon on the ground may give you a buff if you stand in it. Positioning yourself near where the beacon will spawn will increase the time that you get with that buff. Another example can be seeing exactly where to position yourself around targets to hit the maximum amount with whirlwind or cleave, instead of just standing any old place. As a Fury Warrior, most aspects of situational awareness come in the form of proper positioning with respect to certain targets, other players, and certain spell effects, as well as all of those concepts with relation to time.
Most boss fights in each raid have aspects where a high situational awareness will benefit your performance. It is a rare occasion when you fight a boss with no situational awareness requirement.
[top]Experience
Once you become more experienced with certain situations, aspects of situational awareness become hard-coded. You may not need to be situationally aware of certain repeated concepts if you have experienced them before. As in, you know when and where those concepts will occur, and you can avoid it naturally without paying attention to it. Again, we as humans must process information using a single consciousness, and our attention to situational awareness and DPS mechanics are shared. Experience takes away some of the need to focus on situational awareness on some areas. When first coming to a new area that you know you will return to, focus on gaining experience first and foremost. Learn absolutely everything you can about the new situation so that you can achieve the maximum experience possible in the shortest amount of time.
Not all concepts are 100% repeatable and can be completely hard-coded into experience, however. Some players make the mistake to attribute certain concepts to experience when in fact they can be quite random. You may have experience with the concept, but it may happen at a different time or in a different position than the last time. Thus, it is important to achieve a balance. You may use your experience to guide you through a situation, yet make sure to maintain situational awareness if unexpected events may occur.
[top]Reaction Time
As humans, we are unable to react to changes and transmit our commands and responses to the game instantaneously as a computer would. This effect is called reaction time. It is everywhere: when we hit buttons on our keyboard, when we notice we are standing in something we shouldn’t, when we realize we have a new slam proc, and many more! The faster reaction time we have, the less detrimental effect it has on our game. Many things effect reaction time: how old you are, how trained your hands are with the keyboard, what your hotkeys are, if you are sleepy or not, and even if you have been having a bad day. Keep these things in mind! Concepts of reaction time in relation to your DPS and rotation have already been discussed in previous sections. This combined with reacting too slowly to something else, will cause further decreases in performance.
[top]Maximum Performance – the Final Goal
One reaches their highest potential when and only when, they are situationally aware, have maximum experience with the given situation, and can operate most efficiently their DPS mechanics. Experience reduces the needs to maintain situational awareness, and less required situational awareness leads to more focus on DPS mechanics. You will find that in zero-situational awareness scenarios, commonly tank-n-spank fights, we are able to focus solely on our DPS mechanics and you will see higher performance (in terms of DPS) in general. It is true that focusing on situational awareness concepts detracts from our operating our DPS mechanics most efficiently. This is why it is extremely important to develop your levels of experience and situational awareness.
[top]Aggro Table
Any target you are attacking is subject to the rules of the aggro table. A target will normally melee whichever player (or pet) it was hitting last as long as no other player has higher than a certain amount of threat, depending on if they are within melee distance, or further out. If a player in melee distance meet or exceed 110% threat compared to what the target is currently meleeing, then the target will switch to that player. This value is 130% for players at ranged distance. Particularly when fighting a boss or a hard hitting mob, the goal is to not get hit by them, so you must not go over the threat limit compared to the tank that the mob is targetting.
Threat is the total sum of damage of all of your abilities plus any modifiers. As a Fury Warrior, you have a 20% threat reduction naturally from Berserker Stance, plus an additional 10% reduction from the Improved Berserker Stance talent. Quantitatively, you are dealing 90% threat of 80%, equalling a 72% of any damage as threat. So for example, you attacked with a Bloodthirst that crit for 10000 damage. This Bloodthirst will add 7200 threat to your listing on that target’s aggro table. Also, each Heroic Strike (due to it’s tanking use) adds an additional 259 unmodified threat, for an extra 186.5 modified threat. To fully attack a mob safely, you will need to have tanks that can produce sufficient Threat per Second (TPS) so that you will not rip it off when you pass 110% of their threat.
Your TPS = 0.72*(DPS+259*HSPS)
So if you are doing 10000 DPS, and have a HSPS of .45 (90% HSF with a 2.0 MH swing speed), then you will be doing 7284 TPS.
It becomes important to be able to judge your tank regarding how much threat they can produce. Indicators can be their general gear level, how much hit/expertise they have, their competance, etc. Luckily tank mechanics and talents provide them with healthy threat modifiers on their abilities so they can produce significantly larger TPS levels in relation to their actual DPS.
If your tank cannot produce enough threat to hold against your all-out DPS, there are a few things available to close the gap:
1. Stop attacking the target or attack a different one until the tank has sufficient threat for you to restart your DPS.
2. Ask for a Hand of Salvation from a nearby paladin. Hand of Salvation, or „salv“ for short, reduces your total threat level by 2% every second for 10 seconds. This buff does not prevent you from gaining threat while the buff is active however, so try to receive it as late as possible to get the maximum benefit.
3. Have a Prot Warrior give you Vigilance. This gives 10% of the treat you generate on the target directly to the Prot Warrior. This effect will double-dip if the Prot Warrior is tanking. For Example, let’s say you are doing 5500 TPS. The tank needs at least 5001 TPS to hold against you. If that Warrior tank gives you vigilance and is tanking, you will be reduced to 4950 TPS, and that tank now only needs 3950 TPS, because he will still be getting 550 of yours. THis shows how great Vigilance is to have. Here’s some formulas:
Warrior Tank needs (vigilance): (YourTPS*0.9)/1.1-(YourTPS*0.1) = YourTPS*.7182
Tank needs (vigilance): (YourTPS*0.9)/1.1 = YourTPS*.8182
Tank needs: YourTPS*.9091
There are helpful mods which can display information about your aggro on different targets, which are described in the UI section.
[top]Button-Mashing
A common way to perform DPS rotations is by doing what is called button-mashing. By default (there are mods which can change it) each time you release a key after it has been pressed on the keyboard, the ability corresponding to that key will fire off. It will not fire off when you press the key. Naturally then, there is some time that needs to elapse from when you press the key to when you release it. When going to hit a keybind when said ability is coming off of cooldown, it is beneficial to try and time the cooldown with the button release instead of the button press. Sitting on the button trying to time it perfectly each time may be very hazardous to your situational awareness in general. The solution to this issue is to simply „mash“ the button repeatedly just before the cooldown is about to finish so that your margin of error is limited by how fast you can mash the button. All that is required is to know approximately when the ability will cooldown, so you know when to start mashing. This way, you can focus on other things instead of timing the skill correctly.
Finger speed and reaction time support this notion greatly. The more quickly you can press-release the hotkey, the less error margin you will have on firing the ability. Obviously to do this, you need not be clicking DPS rotation abilities. Clicking is extremely detrimental to your DPS as you are spending too much energy positioning your mouse cursor and limit your ability to multitask. Also, since you are repeatedly pressing buttons mutliple times, your actions per minute (APM) can reach in excess of 400 while button mashing. This high APM requires a good deal of energy from your hand. Spreading out your hotkeys into mouse buttons and mouse functions will reduce the amount of strain on your keyboard hand. Also, mapping most used or most important abilities to positions hit with the strongest fingers will increase your efficiency when using keybinds in general.
A Suggested Keybinding Setup:
I will demonstrate an efficient way to map abilities to certain buttons. By default, your movement keys are Q: left strafe, W: forward, E: right strafe, and S: backward. The natural position of your hand on the keyboard will be ring: Q, middle: W, and index: E. This position puts your thumb naturally on C if you have a relaxed arch. When you go to hit different buttons, these fingers float from their natural position and then return once the command is finished. Here is a chart which gives you an idea of how your left hand is used with the keyboard with respect to their natural and floating positions:
| Finger | Natural Position | Floating Keys |
|---|---|---|
| Thumb | C | Spacebar, V, X, Z, Alt, Ctrl |
| Index | E | 3, 4, 5+, R, D, F, other letters |
| Middle | W | 2, S |
| Ring | Q | 1, A |
| Pinky | Tab | Shift |
There are obviously more keys that can be pressed with certain fingers, but these buttons along with the mouse and Shift, Alt, and Ctrl modifiers should be able to cover every important ability you can use. Using logic previously explained, we want to map the most important, most used abilities to the most convenient positions. The most convenient positions are 3, and the trigger button hit by your thumb on the side of your mouse. Next are 2, 4, C, and the second trigger button on the side of your mouse. It would make sense then to put Bloodthirst on 3, and instant Slam on mouse trigger. This puts the most reactive and important abilities on high-efficiency buttons. At the current state of the game, we are hitting Heroic Strike or Cleave very often: about once every 2 seconds. It is smart to not put high frequency moves on the same fingers as Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, and instant Slam. We want to avoid crowding an important area with spammy abilities. The mouse wheel provides the perfect solution for where to put Cleave and Heroic Strike, as it is clearly away from main fingers and requires little energy to operate.
Or, you can design a setup that works best for you, as long as you take this efficiency consciousness to mind. The best way to get used to a particular keybinding setup, whichever you choose, is to practice. Commit the setup to your muscle memory and pretty soon you won’t even have to think about it. This process can take anywhere from an hour to several days, depending on the player. It is not appropriate to turn with A and D while moving as it puts your hotkey fingers out of position to where you cannot effectively button-mash and move around. It is best to turn with your mouse pivot so you can dedicate your fingers more to mashing, as well as be much more precise with your movements. Excessive „keyboard turning“ is an immediate sign of a bad, inexperienced, or lazy player.
[top]Recovering from Rage Starvation
When in a full cycle DPS rotation, there will be a chance to get glancing blows, misses, and sometimes dodges on your rage income generating offhand swings. This can cause your rage level to dip low with rage spending, and sometimes you will not be able to fire the next ability, unless you are able to react quickly to the situation. There are two very simple ways to recover, and this ties nicely into the discussion of button mashing and keybinds.
The first way to always recover from this situation, is to use Bloodrage. A lot of players make the mistake of using Bloodrage at inopportune times. You should never have to use Bloodrage to maintain Heroic Strike Use. Bloodrage is a once-per-40 second ability to give you the option to get a rage boost for a time in need. Always save your Bloodrage for when you get to this rage starved time in your rotation. It will always provide you with enough rage (assuming you don’t go below 5 rage) to hit your next instant ability. By the time your next GCD comes, you will have gotten your next off hand swing. Because you must react to this situation quickly, putting Bloodrage on an appropriate hotkey is important. The second way, is to realize that this is the opportune time to skip next Heroic Strike. A main hand attack generally provides much more rage than your offhand, so there will be a good chance to go from very low rage, to very high rage, which is what you want. This action requires to obviously halt button mashing on your Heroic Strike periodically. You can use both of these ways in combination, but you should always exhaust your Bloodrage first because sometimes you won’t need to stop the next Heroic Strike. Use your judgement wisely.
A very last resort is the use of Berserker Rage. This is extremely situational with proper raid gear and practice, because it is extremely inefficient to use a GCD on an ability that does 0 damage. It is possible that you may hit Berserker Rage and then simultaneously get a slam! proc, and since you used your GCD on Berserker Rage, you won’t be hitting your slam efficiently. If you are absolutely sure your next Heroic Strike will not land during Berserker Rage’s GCD, then it could be possible to use it efficiently. As discussed before, if you have Berserker Rage up and you take damage, you will receive three times more rage from damage intake as you would normally. With this up, you can snag 100 rage by taking only 6000 damage. This can be conveniently done by stepping into that toasty fire everyone tells you to avoid. Massichism does indeed make you angry.
[top]Cooldown and Proc stacking
As Fury Warriors, we have a lot of periodic damage buffs at our disposal. Some are random, and some are controlled. Some are predictable, and some are not. It was previously discussed how damage scales with particular stats, and how an increase in one stat pool can increase the effectiveness of another. For example, an increase in haste will allow a specific amount of attack power to be delivered more quickly, making each point of attack power better than it was without that haste increase. This phenomenon is extremely prevalent with periodic buffs. To maximize this effect, the goal is to use buffs we can control at the most effective times. For example, using Death Wish when [Deathbringer’s Will] has just procced will ensure that these stats and buffs are stacked together for the maximum amount of time.
You can tell the difference between a highly experienced player and a lesser one just by how they time their DPS cooldowns such as Death Wish. A more experienced player will try to stack and overlap cooldowns with periodic and/or random buffs for as long as possible as often as possible.
[top]Death Wish
Death Wish is our primary DPS cooldown, as it is the most powerful and lasts the longest. Since each boss fight has a different fight length, it is true that there will be some fights where you must use this ability in different ways due to how it’s cooldown interacts with the fight duration. Take for example a 2:30 fight. It is only possible to use 2 Death Wishes. If you wait to use Death Wish until 0:10 and hit the second Death Wish immediately as it cools down, then you will only benefit from 20 our of the 30 seconds of it’s duration, since the fight will end. Effectively, 1/3 of the second Death Wish was wasted because you decided to time the first one. Thus, it is very important to determine around how long the fight will be, so you can decide if you can time your Death Wishes to stack with other procs.
| Fight Duration | Death Wishes | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00-2:00 | 1 | Best single location |
| 2:01-2:30 | 2 | Cannot time |
| 2:31-4:00 | 2 | Best 2 locations |
| 4:01-4:30 | 3 | Cannot time |
| 4:31-6:00 | 3 | Best 3 locations |
As you can see, for fights ending after every 2 minutes for 30 seconds your last Death Wish will be cut off normally, so if you delay any Death Wish previous, your last Death Wish will be cut off even more. If you mess up, it is possible to miss the last Death Wish completely, and this must be avoided.
Also keep in mind that Death Wish requires a GCD and does 0 damage. Since our rotation is intense when managing our GCD’s correctly, it is best to use Death Wish only in the position directly after the 2nd Bloodthirst in our 8s rotational basis, in priority above instant slam. This allows our BT-WW-BT pattern to remain undelayed from the Death Wish. If you are deciding to use Death Wish in the particular rotation period you are in, you must use any slam that would normally go where the Death Wish is going in the 1.0s free space or (depending on when the proc happened) after the Death Wish, each delaying your BT-WW-BT pattern by at least 0.5s. This is okay since we have established before that letting a slam completely expire is worse than that.
[top]Hysteria and Tricks of the Trade
Hysteria is a helper buff that is provided by a Blood-specced Death Knight with teh small catch of dealing 1% of your max health as damage to you every second. Hysteria is Identical to Death Wish in power and Duration. Unfortunately, you cannot stack the damage buff of Hysteria with Deathwish’s damage buff. If Hysteria is available to you, it is best to know beforehand so that you can time your Death Wishes afterword. Since Hysteria has a 3 minute cooldown before it can be used a second time, there’s only one good way to line them up.
Hysteria 1: 0:00-0:30
Death Wish 1: 0:30-1:00
Death Wish 2: 2:30-3:00
Hysteria 2: 3:00-3:30
Death Wish 3: 4:30-5:00
(pattern repeats +6 min)
If there is more than one Death Knight willing to give Hysteria to you, then start with Death Wish first and fill Hysteria in between. There should be no scenario in which this is absolutely required, unless you are trying to set some obsurd DPS record.
Death Wish 1: 0:00-0:30
DK1 Hysteria 1: 0:30-1:00
DK2 Hysteria 1: 1:00-1:30
DK3 Hysteria 1: 1:30-2:00
Death Wish 2: 2:00-2:30
DK1 Hysteria 2: 3:30-4:00
Death Wish 3: 4:00-4:30
DK2 Hysteria 2: 4:30-5:00
DK3 Hysteria 2: 5:00-5:30
Death Wish 4: 6:00-6:30
etc…
Tricks of the Trade is another helper buff provided by any Rogue. This has a much smaller cooldown, but has a smaller effect than Hysteria or Death Wish. It lasts for 6 (10 with glyph) seconds, and the Rogue can use it every 30 seconds. Anytime you have this buff however, you will be receiving all of that Rogue’s threat. Essentially, you are dealing threat for two. Sometimes also Rogues blow cooldowns when Tricks is up, so you will be getting more than his average TPS at that time. If you are already high on threat compared to your tank, you don’t want to be getting the Rogue’s threat in addition to yours lest you will pull aggro. It is normal practice for rogues to tricks other rogues because tricksing eachother cancels out the effect of the threat gain received from the other rogue. Most of the time rogues tricks eachother in pairs, and if there are an odd number of rogues, the odd one will choose a non-rogue to receive the buff, which could be you. If you are fine on aggro versus your tank, feel free to receive Tricks. Tricks also does not stack with Hysteria or Death Wish, so tell your Rogue to use it on someone else when you have Death Wish active.
[top]Heroism/Bloodlust
For fights less than 10 minutes long, Heroism/Bloodlust can only be used once. Heroism is a free buff with no cost to you that increases your DPS a good deal. It provides 30% increased attack speed for 40 seconds. This IAS has an effect increase similar to 984 haste rating. This IAS does stack multiplicatively with your haste rating and Flurry, as in it makes your haste rating and Flurry better for the buff’s duration. Since this is a raid-wide cooldown, it is most often used where the speed in crease is needed, such as in a difficult phase of the fight. It is important to know beforehand when Heroism/Bloodlust will be used so that you can time your cooldowns to line up with it if possible. If the fight duration does not restrict your Death Wish timing, it is best to try and line up your Death Wish so it elapses its full duration inside the Heroism/Bloodlust. Depending on your trinket setup, however, it may be more beneficial to prioritize certain trinket proc combinations ahead of Heorism/Bloodlust for cooldown stacking. Since Heroism/Bloodlust lsats an entire 40 seconds though, there is a good chance that any trinket proc will also coincide with it, and a small chance that they won’t coincide. You have a great chance for at least one trinket to coincide with the Deathwish, which coincides with the Heroism/Bloodlust for full stackage.
[top]Recklessness
Like Death Wish, this is not a dps ability, it is a cooldown. It Does 0 damage and uses GCD. We have to evaluate how much an increase in DPS this cooldown will give compared to how much we will lose by using a GCD on it. Recklessness is not a very powerful cooldown, and it actually gets weaker the more critical strike chance you have. Recklessness grants your next 3 special abilities guaranteed as critical strikes if they were allowed to hit, as in not dodge, parry, or miss. The more crit you have, the more often you would have crit anyways. So, this cooldown really scales backwards. Recklessness will usually be consumed by the 3 special attacks well before it’s 10s timer expires. Therefore, it does not scale with haste. It only stacks with attack power or damage increasing modifiers.
It is best to save Recklessness to use with Strength or AP procs, and damage increasing modifiers like Death Wish only. It is also best to make sure Bloodthirst will receive this buff, since it is the highest damage single-hit ability. Each hit of multi-hit abilities, such as Whirlwind and Cleave will use one charge of Recklessness. If your Recklessness has 3 stacks and you Whirlwind multiple targets, your Recklessness will be consumed. Recklessness will buff all special attacks until it removed by expending the last charge. It is possible due to server lag, to only have one charge left on Recklessness, and have all 8 hits of a Whirlwind on 4 targets crit solely form that one charge.
[top]Proc Trinkets
Trinkets without an on-use ability usually have automatic procs on hit or crit. Most of the DPS-related automatic proc tirnkets have an internal cooldown, meaning it cannot proc more than once every X seconds, meaning if it procs, it must wait X seconds to proc again. Since we attack very frequently, the average time to proc the trinket again after the ICD has finished is usually no more than a few seconds. This is called re-proc time. Trinkets that have an on-crit proc will have a higher average re-proc time than trinkets with on-hit procs. Trinkets with a higher chance to proc will have a smaller re-proc time than trinkets with a lower chance to proc. Based on these notions and knowing what the ICD is of the trinket, we can reliably predict exactly when the trinkets will proc so we can time our Death Wish accordingly!
The best trinkets have procs with Attack Power or Strength for their relative item level. Trinket procs like haste or crit have the potential to interfere with effectiveness caps. You can only crit so much, and you can only attack so fast to fully utilize, yet you can never hit too hard! Remember the goal is to line up Recklessness, Death Wish, Heroism, and
your haste potion with each other as often as possible, and generally attack-size increasers interact the best with these stacks.
[top]Haste Potion
When one thinks of the best time to use a [Potion of Speed], one often thinks of using it during Heroism/Bloodlust. While it will be effectively 30% better with than without the raid cooldown, that being the best place is not always true. It is possible for this potion to be more effective with other cooldown and proc combinations where Heroism/Bloodlust does not fall. One example would be Death Wish, a double AP trinket proc, and Blood Drinker from 2pT10. Since you can only use one potion, though, you should always be able to use it with Death Wish, and Death Wish should always be able to be used with Heroism/Bloodlust, which most likely will have trinket procs be active during that duration.
The problem with stacking haste with more haste and IAS effects like Heroism/Bloodlust is that we get to the point where our offhand is generating rage so quickly that we will be unable to spend that generated rage even while spamming Heroic Strike! At high gear levels we are kind of at this level anyway, so this doesn’t really matter.
[top]Non-damage related raiding functions
Any Fury Warrior worth their grain of salt has the ability to support their raid, and optimally fit in their required support abilities in their rotation. If all you are doing is DPS, then a raid leader will be less inclined to bring you since that is the only role you are filling. If you are known for providing your support optimally, then you will be more likely to be rewarded with a permanent raid spot. A few common support options are Sunder Armor, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout, and Pummel.
[top]Sunder Armor Application and Upkeep
If there is no protection warrior in your group, then it is your responsibility (shared with other DPS warriors) to apply Sunder Armor to the main DPS target. In some fights, there will be main DPS targets which die quickly (30 seconds or less) where it would be more beneficial to have a Rogue keep up Expose Armor. This is true because the Rogue loses less damage than the Warrior(s) who have to spend 5 globals versus the Rogue losing a finisher. Also, it is beneficial to assist the Protection Warrior tanking your target to apply the stack, even if devastate is standard in their rotation. For details on how to efficiently apply Sunder Armor without destroying your rotation DPS, refer to section 3.5. For stack maintenance, it is helpful to modify your UI to track the duration of the Sunder stack.
[top]When to Demoralizing Shout
Sometimes it is beneficial to put up a Demoralizing Shout if you have a free GCD with no slam proc. This will help your tank cope with the damage from hard-hitting physical bosses and increase your raid’s chance of survival. There are quite a bit of other classes and specs that can apply this debuff as well, and if they are the tank you should let them do it if they are able. Classes which can provide this are: Retribution or Protection-Retribution Paladins with Vindication, Feral Druids in bear form for Demoralizing Roar, and of course other warriors. Again if it is your responsibility, there are UI modifications which can help you manage the upkeep of the shout.
[top]Maintaining Commanding Shout
All Warriors have the unique ability to supply the most powerful HP-increasing (not stamina) buff in the game. This is only shared with the Warlock Imp’s Blood Pact which is much weaker. This HP-increasing buff will prevent certain members of your group from dying sometimes, as well as increasing the efficiency of some max-health scaling heals. Commanding Shout can become improved through talents in both duration and amount of HP, in some variation of all three Arms, Fury, and Protection specs. Only one Warrior needs this talent, and it can be you. Normally Commanding Shout lasts for 2 minutes, however it can be increased to a 6 minute duration. If you are responsible for Commanding Shout, it is recommended to spec and glyph for at least the duration, so that you do not spend extra GCDs refreshing the buff in the middle of the fight. There are UI modifications which can help you manage the upkeep of the shout.
[top]Spell Interrupting
Some boss mechanics require the use of interrupting spells, sometimes alone, and sometimes in a rotation with other players. If you are chosen to be the interrupter or are chosen to be in an interrupt rotation, you must be ready to use your pummel on queue of the spellcast. Having your Pummel keybound to a trigger finger (index or mouse thumb) is recommended due to the need for quick reaction and reliability. Pummel is off the GCD, so it will not interrupt or interfere with your rotation mechanics. The only requirement is the ten rage cost. Keep in mind that you must at all times maintain at least ten rage when it does come time to use Pummel, so that you do not miss the Pummel due to insufficient rage.
If Pummel is successful, it will not only interrupt the spell being cast, but also prevent that target from casting another spell in that same spell school (Fire, Frost, Shadow, Nature, Holy) for 4 seconds. If for example the target’s scripted AI dictates it to repeatedly cast the same spell, you alone will not be able to interrupt every cast. It takes at least two interrupters to successfully lock out a 1.5 second cast. To do this, the first interrupt would have to wait until at least one second of the cast has elapsed before interrupting it, effectively causing a 5 second lockout instead of 4. The next player would do the same, and by the time the 3rd cast is coming, the 1st interrupter would have their interrupt finished cooling down 1 second into the cast. This is of course barring lag or latency, so a thirst interrupter is recommended to completely insure the lockout of the repeated cast if the first two aren’t completely comfortable. Other common interrupts from other players you will see are as follows: Rogues a Kick, and it has the same 4 second lockout period and 10 second cooldown. Protection warriors have Shield Bash, which also has a 4 second lockout, but a 12 second cooldown. Shamans have Wind Shear, which has a 2 second lockout on a 6 second cooldown. Many other classes have interrupts with different mechanics, but you will usually see Rogues, Warriors, and Enhancement Shaman share the melee interrupt responsibility due to the efficiency.
When in an interrupt rotation, it is important to have an open line of communication between the players in the rotation. If one of you is unable to hit their interrupt, for any reason: out of position, out of rage/energy, interrupt missed, etc, you must communicate those happenings so that you or someone can react quickly and step in.
[top]Understanding your Racials in a raid setting
Each race in the game with the exception of Blood Elf can be a Fury Warrior. Each race has different racial abilities, which will increase your effectiveness of being a Fury Warrior in different ways. It is important to understand what your racial abilities do for you.
[top]Human
Every Man For Himself: This racial removes all movement impairing and control-losing effects on your character, and is on a 2 minute cooldown. A prime example of this is on Northrend Beasts in Trial of the Crusader when you are targetted with Frost Breath on Icehowl. Use this ability after you become stunned, and you will be freed from it. You can also use it to remove slowdowns like Frostbolt Volley. Some encounters have the control loss scripted where you cannot get out of it, like Putricide’s Tear Gas.
Sword and Mace Specialization: Increases your expertise points by 3 when wearing a sword or mace in that particular hand. Simply put, this racial reduces the amount of expertise rating required to reach the cap which has the benefit of allowing a Human to acquire additional stats in place of expertise or to allow to have different best item combinations when using maces or swords. These 3 points contribute to 25 of the 214 required rating for the expertise cap, allowing you to only wear 189 rating and be capped on that hand. Note, that the bonus only effects the hand that the weapon is in. For example if your sword or mace is in the offhand, you will not get that expertise bonus for your main hand and special attacks if you are wearing an axe there. Sometimes you will be in a situation where your best weapon is not a mace or sword and the racial bonus in the main hand will not makeup the difference. Most of the time it’s still best to use your best weapon in the main hand if it is an axe, since the DPS increase will overcome the 25 potential rating loss.
[top]Gnome
Escape Artist: This racial instantly removes all movement impairing effects on you and and has a 1 minute, 45 second cooldown. This does not make you immune to these effects as they can be reapplied after you cast it. Also, you cannot remove the Dazed debuff.
Arcane Resistance: Your chance to be hit by arcane spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly arcane attack.
[top]Dwarf
Stoneform: This racial removes all poison, disease, and bleed effects on you and increases your armor by 10% for 8 seconds, and has a 2 minute cooldown. This does not make you immune to poison, disease, and bleed effects as they can be reapplied after you cast it. The 10% armor bonus also gives you some additional attack power through Armored to the Teeth accordingly.
Frost Resistance: Your chance to be hit by frost spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly frost attack.
[top]Nightelf
Shadowmeld: This is a useful tool to have in an aggro-sensitive environment. It temporarily removes you from all aggro-tables of all targets. Shadowmeld lasts indefinitely and is canceled upon any XYZ axis displacement, personal action, or if you take damage or become affected by a debuff. Once Shadowmeld is canceled, your will reappear on the aggro-tables where you once were with the same threat before you Shadowmelded. This ability does not reduce or remove your threat! Also, mobs will only ignore you if you are high enough level compared to the mob, and if you are far enough away from the mob. Shadowmeld is very useful if you are being targetted by a spell cast as well. If your Shadowmeld is successful before the cast has finished, your attacker will stop casting and target the appropriate player (or pet) based on the new aggro table. This also works if you are being melee’d or being hit with ranged attacks.
Quickness: Your chance to be hit by ranged or melee is reduced by 2%. This ability does not work for spells. It might make you lucky if by chance you are targetted by a deadly physical attack.
Nature Resistance: Your chance to be hit by nature spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly nature attack.
[top]Draenei
Heoric Presence: This increases the hit chance of you and the players in your party (not the entire raid) by 1%, and is an aura with 30 range. This allows you to wear 33 less hit rating if you are only getting enough for the special hit cap, as well as the party you are placed in. Instead of capping at 164, you can now cap at 131 provided you have 3/3 Precision. It is very beneficial to raid DPS if there are enough Draenei in your raid to cover all of the DPS players.
Gift of the Naaru: This racial is a healing spell you can use on yourself or others, with a 40 yard range and a 3 minute cooldown. It places a heal-over-time on the target, hitting for 247 plus 1/5 of your attack power every 3 seconds 5 times. It’s base heal scales with level, doing (Level*15)+35 over 15 seconds. So if you have 8000 attack power, the HOT will tick for 1847, 5 times for a total of 9235 over 15 seconds. This ability causes threat based on the amount healed. It creates 1 point of threat for 2 points of healing, appearing on all target’s threat tables. So if you cast gift on yourself or a group member and there is no other threat on a particular mob, you will aggro it.
Shadow Resistance: Your chance to be hit by shadow spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly shadow attack.
[top]Orc
Axe Specialization:Increases your expertise points by 5 when wearing an axe in that particular hand. Simply put, this racial reduces the amount of expertise rating required to reach the cap which has the benefit of allowing an Orc to acquire additional stats in place of expertise or to allow to have different best item combinations when using axes. These 5 points contribute to 41 of the 214 required rating for the expertise cap, allowing you to only wear 173 rating and be capped on that hand. Note, that the bonus only effects the hand that the weapon is in. For example if your axe is in the off hand, you will not get that expertise bonus for your main hand and special attacks. Sometimes you will be in a situation where your best weapon is not an axe and the racial bonus in the main hand will not makeup the difference. Most of the time it’s still best to use your best weapon in the main hand regardless if it is an axe, since the DPS increase will overcome the 41 potential rating loss.
Blood Fury: This ability increases your attack power by 322, Lasts 15 seconds, and is on a 2 minute cooldown. This buff scales with level, increases your attack power by (Level*4)+2 = 322 at Lvl80. It is optimal to use this racial with Death Wish, which also has a 2 minute cooldown providing you have 3/3 Intensify Rage. You can create a two-hit macro (all actions used while hitting the macro twice) since it is off the GCD, which will stack them easier.
#showtooltip Death Wish
/cast Death Wish
/cast Blood Fury
Hardiness: This reduces stun duration by 15%. Not a huge deal, but it is what it is.
[top]Troll
Berserking: This increases your attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds, and is on a 3 Minute cooldown. It is optimal to use this racial with Death Wish. Provided that you have 3/3 Intensify Rage, these will be able to line up on every other Death Wish. You can use this with a macro in a similar fashion to Blood Fury since it is off the GCD, except every other one it won’t work, which is completely fine.
#showtooltip Death Wish
/cast Death Wish
/cast Berserking
Beast Slaying: This increases your damage to beasts by 5%. An extremely overlooked racial, this acts as a multiplicative damage increasing modifier (DIM) against any beast mob including bosses. Some boss examples include Maexxna and Icehowl.
Da Voodoo Shuffle: This reduces the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 15%. Some bosses have slowing effects like Frostbolt Volley, so it helps a little if you have to move around when those are present.
[top]Tauren
Endurance: This increases your base health by 5%. Warriors at level 80 have 7941 base health. The increase grants an additional 397 health. Not a huge deal, but if you ever live with less than 397 health, you know what to thank.
Warstomp: This 0.5s cast stuns targets within 8 yards of you for 2 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown. Since it is a cast, it will reset your swing timer. It’s not really great to use in a DPS rotation because of this, but it can help with controlling mobs or interrupting spells.
Nature Resistance: Your chance to be hit by nature spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly nature attack.
[top]Undead
Will of the Forsaken: This ability removes any fear, sleep, or charm effect. Since Warriors already have Berserker Rage, this is more of a backup for fears if you get feared outside of your enrage buff. Sleeps and charms are much less common than fears, so this is not widely useful.
Shadow Resistance: Your chance to be hit by shadow spells is reduced by 2%. Since we take 5% more damage than normal in Berserker stance, it helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly shadow attack.
Cannibalize: This regenerates 7% your of total health every 2 sec for 10 sec, for a total of 35% health, only works on Humanoid or Undead corpses within 5 yds, and has a 2 minute cooldown. Not hugely useful, but can be used as a backup downtime reducer which is a little bit better than a bandage if you have high health.
[top]Staying Alive
A large part of situational awareness and experience is being able to keep yourself from dying. Dead warriors do no DPS after they die, so this should be an absolute #1 goal. In situations where we take constant unavoidable damage (like damaging aura spells) we must also learn to trust the healer(s) to keep us healthy. One must keep a watchful, reactive eye however, as sometimes healers are not able to do their job, or are inadept at doing their job. In these scenarios we must be ready and willing to perform actions not synonymous with DPS so that we remain alive to be able to continue DPS at a later time. Thankfully, we have a few tools to reduce damage, or avoid damage all together with certain movement abilities. Understanding the scenario that you are in by having experience with it is essential because you will be able to predict these times before they happen and act accordingly. There are many scenarios in the game which spell instant death for you if handled wrongly and cannot be healed through if you aren’t paying attention.
[top]Shield and Shield Wall use
The strongest tool for survival we have is using Shield Wall. This reduces the damage you take by 60%, reducing all damage to 40% of their original damage. For example, if you were to be hit by a 60000 damage attack, it will be reduced to 24000 damage. It has a 12 second duration, has a 5 minute cooldown, and has a shared 10 second cooldown with Recklessness and Retaliation. For example if you used Recklessness, you won’t be able to Shield Wall until 10 seconds after. Make sure if you ever use Recklessness or Retaliation that you won’t need to use Shield Wall reactively.
Also, to activate Shield Wall you must have a shield equipped, and be in Defensive Stance. You do not need to remain in Defensive Stance for Shield Wall to remain active, and as a Fury Warrior with Titan’s Grip, you can replace your off hand and Shield Wall will not cancel. Coupled with the Defensive Stance bonus, you will take (100%-10%)*(100%-60%)=36% base damage, compared to 105% damage without Shield Wall in Berserker Stance. This is a factor of about 3 times less damage. It is most effective to activate Shield Wall, and return to DPS as soon as possible however, since the protection will remain even when you exit Defensive Stance and remove your shield. In Berserker Stance with Shield Wall, you will still be taking only (100%+5%)*(100%-60%)=42% base damage.
Since using Shield Wall requires many steps, macros to different extents come in great handy. The full process requires a total of 7 simultaneous and non-simultaneous commands:
1: Go into Defensive Stance, stopcasting if for some reason you toggled Heroic Strike or Cleave
2: Equip Shield
3: Activate Shield Wall, go into Berserker Stance, stopcasting if for some reason you toggled Heroic Strike or Cleave
4: Replace off hand
The server must recognize all commands from (1) and (2) before commands in (3) and (4) can be performed. There is latency and some interface lag involved in this process, so it can become slightly cumbersome and not instantaneous. The server and interface you are using must recognize that you have a shield equipped and are in Defensive Stance before you can activate Shield Wall. Also, each time you swap weapons from off hand to shield or from shield to off hand will incur a GCD, locking you out of other instant abilities on the GCD for 1.5 seconds. Also, you cannot swap weapons in your inventory if Heroic Strike or Cleave are toggled on! If you are spamming these abilities you must have a stopcasting command to toggle them off. In your macro, you may choose to leave out any step if you wish to perform that manually, as most players have different keybind and interface layouts. Also, macros are limited to 255 characters, so your macro may be too large with extensive commands. Also, if the macro is pressed too many times, you may inadvertently start executing the beginning of the macro once it is finished. It is thusly recommended to leave out the off-hand replacing commands and instead put them in a different macro as well as limit the functionality of the macro to certain condition so that you do not perform steps inadvertently.
#showtooltip Shield Wall
/cast [noequipped:Shields] Defensive Stance;
/stopcasting
/equip [noequipped:Shields] name of shield;
/cast [equipped:Shields, stance:2] Shield Wall;
/cast [stance:2] Berserker Stance;
Due to all of these limitations, make sure that if you are going to use Shield Wall it is mostly to prevent you from dying.
[top]Enraged Regeneration
Another tool we have is Enraged Regeneration. This ability consumes all enrage effects (Berserker Rage, Death Wish, Enrage, Bloodrage, Recklessness), gives us a heal-over-time based on our maximum health, and makes you immune to all enrage effects for the duration. It heals you for 30% of your maximum health over 10 seconds, more accurately ticking 3% every second. You must have an active enrage effect (see previous) to activate this HOT. It is also on the GCD. Due to it consuming and making you immune to some of your DPS buffs, this spell is somewhat of a tradeoff. Make sure that you are using it wisely so you can justify the potential DPS loss of something like a wasted Death Wish or Recklessness.
[top]Intervene and Intercept
Sometimes the best way to survive is just plain getting the hell out. Luckily in raids, we usually have nearby group members a distance away from the dangerous point, so we can Intervene them and get out of the way. Once the area near your target is safe, you can easily Intercept back. Intervene also reduces the threat of your friendly target on all mobs by 10% which is an added bonus to them. Make sure that if you are intervening a tank, that they are not tanking something. If you do that, then you will reduce his threat and take the next physical swing he would have taken! If no group member is near a safe zone but another target is, you also have the option of using Intercept on the safe target. Again, do not intervene back to the tank, you will probably die or get someone else killed.
[top]Defensive Stance
If all else fails, then you are stuck with sitting in Defensive Stance and praying you don’t die. This allows you to take 90% damage instead of 105% damage, which is a small difference. Staying in this stance should be a last resort since you will be limited to only your Bloodthirst, instant Slam, Thunderclap, and Rend as your only instant DPS abilities. On top of this, you will be doing 5% less damage, lose your Improved Berserker Stance capability, and do 207.35% threat per point of damage compared to 72% in Berserker Stance.
[top]Recommended User Interface Modifications
To be honest, the default User Interface that the game provides does not allow for optimal play. For example, the player frame where your rage level is located is in the top left of the screen, constantly forcing you to refocus your attention constantly on that distant part of the screen. There also is no separation of dps procs like Berserking, Trinkets, and more importantly Slam! from other more constant raid buffs. Also with the default UI, it is more difficult to keep track of the debuffs you may be responsible for, like Sunder Armor. Hotkeys and button placement in relation to your current stance is also limited. Below are groupings of user interface modifications you can change to make your Warrior life much, much easier. You can download most of these mentioned at Curse.com or wowinterface.com.
Unit Frames: Unit frames consist of the following interface units:
1. Player Frame: This is the unit where your portrait, health, and rage is.
2. Target Frame: This is the unit where your target’s portrait, health, level, type, and mana or rage or energy is.
3. Target of Target Frame: This is the unit that contains information about the thing your target is currently targetting.
3a. Target of Target of Target of… Frame Some addons can monitor a large amount of foresight. The usefulness of this is somewhat out there, but it can be fun sometimes.
4. Focus Frame: This is the unit that contains information about your current focus. Your focus is a target which you always want to have information on, regardless if you are targetting it or not. This frame will remain visible until you cancel the focus, or focus something else. You can focus something by typing /focus when targetting that thing, or use the designated hotkey for it. Repeating the command with nothing or something else targetted will turn off or change the focus, respectively.
5. Party Frames: These units contain information about people in your party. If you are in a raid, you can choose to have these hidden.
6. Raid Frames: These units contain information about all the players in your raid.
7. Pet Frame This unit contains information about the combat pet you have or the vehicle you are driving, like a Demolisher or a Drake.
There are many different addons which give you a large package of customizable options for each unit frame. These options include size, placement, layout, information given, fonts, graphics, showing or hiding, conditions, highlights, etc. Configure each frame so that the most important information (like your health and rage) is in the most convenient location on your screen and is in the most optimal layout for you to read, so that you can simultaneously maintain high situational awareness while making proper decisions.
Some examples of Unit Frame addons are: Pitbull, Xperl, Grid (Party/Raid only), and Shadowed Unit Frames.
Buff Frames: Buff frames organize information about the buffs or debuffs you have. Some addons allow you to port buffs and debuffs of non-players (normally handled as Aura units) into it’s handling. This is especially useful for making a Sunder Armor timer, for example. In order to effectively monitor our DPS procs such as Berserking, Trinket procs, or Slam!, we need to be able to separate them from other groups of buffs so that we have clear visual indicators.
Buff Frames addons will give you a large package of customizable options for each group of buffs. With the default UI, it only gives you 2 uncustomizable groups: buffs and debuffs. With the right addon, you can create multiple groups with it’s own organization, look, and information. Each addon has their unique way of handling things and extent of customizability. The key to this is to create a seperate group for your Slam! buff and your periodic DPS proccing buffs.
Some examples of Buff Frames addons are: Elkano’s Buff Bars, Satrina Buff Frames.
Proc Tracking: While a good buff frame addon can be customized to handle this, there are addons which are specifically designed to notify you of specific events such as your Slam! proc or other periodic DPS proccing buffs. From audio alarms, to flashing graphics, to just plain bar form, each addon has it’s different way of notifying you.
Some examples of Proc Tracking addons are: Tell me When, Power Auras.
Bloodsurge Tracking: One of the most important things you need to customize to achieve optimal DPS rotations with the least amount of focusing effort. You can create this by customizing a Buff Frame addon or using a Proc Tracking addon.
Debuff Tracking: If you have alternative responsibilities other than doing DPS, like Sundering or applying Demoralizing Shout, then you will need a way to easily track the duration of specific debuffs on your target. This can be handled with a Buff Frame addon by creating an additional group and filtering for those debuffs, or handled by your Unit Frame addon’s Aura functions on the Target Frame. You may also choose to track spells which overlap yours, like Demoralizing Roar or Expose Armor, so that you know that you won’t need to apply your version of that debuff in the matrix.
Cooldown Awareness: When timing your major DPS cooldowns like Death Wish and Recklessness, it is beneficial to know exactly how much time they have left before they are ready. In the default UI, a grey clock appears on the button which can be difficult to discern. An addon like OmniCC can put a timer on your button replacing or in addition to that grey clock which will give you a much better indication. Also addons like Ghostpulse will put a graphic or text on your screen telling you when a specific cooldown is ready.
Action Bars and Hotkeys: To enhance the capabilities of action bars and hotkeys, it is recommended to use an addon which seamlessly combines this functionality as well as let’s you organize the appearance of the action bar. The key here is to maximize hotkey customizability in different stances. The game comes equipped with 120 button locations. These 120 button locations can be split up into groups called „pages.“ These pages can be assigned to any bar of any size you create with these addons. Different pages can be accessed with each bar based on assigned conditions such as stance changing, or hitting Shift, Ctrl, or Alt. For example, the physicality of Bar 1 could contain 6 different pages: Bars 1 through 6, one for each condition of Battle Stance, Defensive Stance, Berserker Stance, Shift, Ctrl, and Alt. Bar the physicality of Bar 7 could contain Bars 7 through 12. With the default UI, you are limited to only having one physical bar able to change to different pages, whereas with these addons you can have more than one physically changing bar. Also, the assigning of hotkeys is less confusing than the default UI.
Some examples of Action Bar addons are: Dominos, Bartender.
Boss Mods: Boss mods give you timers on important Boss events which can supplement your experience with the fight and possibly increase your situational awareness. These timers can help you time your major DPS cooldowns better in line with Boss phases, allow you to be more prepared with positioning changes, and allow for anticipation of defensive moves to handle incoming harmful damage.
Some examples of Boss Mods addons are: Deus Vox Encounters, Deadly Boss Mods, BigsWigs Boss Mods, and AVR Encounters.
Shout Timer: Battle Shout and Commanding shout are buffs which when you apply will show on yourself. These will appear normally with your Buff Frames, however it may be beneficial to create a specific group of them that only display your shouts, Blessing of Might, and/or Blood Pact (a health boosting Warlock-Imp spell). This will give you a convenient, exact indicator for deciding when to apply or refresh your buffing shouts.
[top]Macro List
Intervene Target or Player (1-press)
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
Off Hand Weapon Replace (1-press)
/stopcasting
/equipslot 17 name of off hand
Shield Equip/Spell Reflect (Arms or Defensive only) (3-press)
/stopcasting
/equip [noequipped:Shields] name of shield;
/cast [equipped:Shields] Spell Reflection;
Stance Dance/Retaliation (3-press)**
/stopcasting
/cast [stance:3] Battle Stance;
/cast [stance:1] Retaliation;
/cast [stance:1] Berserker Stance;
Shield Equip/Stance Dance/Shield Wall (2-press)**
#showtooltip Shield Wall
/cast [noequipped:Shields] Defensive Stance;
/stopcasting
/equip [noequipped:Shields] name of shield;
/cast [equipped:Shields, stance:2] Shield Wall;
/cast [stance:2] Berserker Stance;
Stance Dance/Shattering Throw (2-press)
#showtooltip Shattering Throw
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Shattering Throw
/say Shattering Throw!
Stance Dance/Rend (3-press)**
/stopcasting
/cast [Berserker Stance] Battle Stance
/cast [Battle Stance] Rend
/cast [Battle Stance] Berserker Stance
Death Wish Party Notifier (1-press)
#showtooltip Death Wish
/p Using Death Wish
/cast Death Wish
/in 30 /p Death Wish Down
Ultimate Deathbringer’s Will Mounter (1-press)
/Leave Vehicle
/stopcasting
/cancelaura aim of the iron dwarves
/cancelaura speed of the vrykul
/cancelaura strength of the taunka
/dismount
/stopcasting
/use name of mount
**The 1.0s Stance GCD must be finished before you can cast the last line.
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